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ELI5: The Bahá'í Faith.

-Monotheistic (One God) -About 6 million of them -Three main principles - Unity of God - Unity of religion - Unity of humankind The head of the religion between 1921-1957, Shoghi Effendi, said this as a summary of the uniqueness of the faith: The independent search after truth, unfettered by superstition or tradition; the oneness of the entire human race, the pivotal principle and fundamental doctrine of the Faith; the basic unity of all religions; the condemnation of all forms of prejudice, whether religious, racial, class or national; the harmony which must exist between religion and science; the equality of men and women, the two wings on which the bird of humankind is able to soar; the introduction of compulsory education; the adoption of a universal auxiliary language; the abolition of the extremes of wealth and poverty; the institution of a world tribunal for the adjudication of disputes between nations; the exaltation of work, performed in the spirit of service, to the rank of worship; the glorification of justice as the ruling principle in human society, and of religion as a bulwark for the protection of all peoples and nations; and the establishment of a permanent and universal peace as the supreme goal of all mankind—these stand out as the essential elements [which Bahá'u'lláh proclaimed]

Are Fourier transforms something fundamental in our Universe?

So I was watching a [Sixty Symbols video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OOmSyaoAt0) about bandwidth and Fourier transform and in some part of it, it is said that Δf x Δt ≈ 1, where Δf is the range of frequencies that can pass through the cable and Δt is the minimum pulse width that those frequencies can make(Fourier). So for example in an optical fiber cable you can't send very short pulses because the Fourier transform of that pulse would have frequencies components beyond the limit of the optical fiber. My question is: That doesn't imply that the Fourier transform(and its sinusoids components) are not only a mathematical tool but a fundamental part of our universe? I mean, shouldn't the minimum pulse width be determined only by the wavelength of the frequency carrying the signal?

The usefulness of fourier transforms stems from the fact that many physical systems appear to be **linear** in their nature. This allows solutions to be disassembled into various bases, which might be easier to work with. There are many choices for that basis, and sine waves is a very useful one. > shouldn't the minimum pulse width be determined only by the wavelength of the frequency carrying the signal Complex signals *don't have* a wavelength. But they can be decomposed into periodic modes, that *do* have a wavelength. The individual modes' behavior can in many cases then be easily calculated and the linearity of the system allows us to put back together the evolving modes to get an answer to our original question. In some cases it's easier to chose not sine waves, but for example wavelets or complex exponentials. Whether or not this is fundamental to our universe is ultimately asking whether or not mathematics itself is fundamental to our universe. Fourier transform is (in this application) first and foremost a rearrangement of mathematical objects, so that they are easier to work with. Like when you try to add 199+198, which you might in your head rearrange to 200+200-3. It's a "trick" that works in certain situations (giving a lot of insight), but not in others. Quantum mechanics is a linear theory, but general relativity is a non-linear theory. So it's definitely not applicable to everything what we know about the universe.

Why do mammals usually have dull coloration when compared to some birds, reptiles and fish?

Basically, there is no mammal that comes close to a bird of paradise, a milk snake, a clownfish or a jewel beetle in terms of coloration. Why?

There are proximate and ultimate causes at work here. Proximately, mammals lack the genes to make most kinds of structural pigments. Many of the really bright, iridescent colors of animals are structural. Mammals are generally limited in the kinds of pigments they have available. Ultimately, _most_ brightly colored animals use their bright colors to communicate with others of the same species. The ancestor of all mammals was nocturnal, and to this day most mammal species do not use vision as their central means of communication, instead relying on scent and sound. Most mammals have relatively poor color perception as well, especially on the red end of the spectrum. So there has been little pressure for them to evolve new colorful displays or to keep those ancestral genes for structural colors. The exception to all of this is the old-world primates, which are active during the day, have full color vision, and have some of the most colorful displays of all mammals (consider the baboon, for example).

ELI5: If I am submerged in a bath and I drink some of the water does the water level go up, down or stay the same?

In abstract theory, the water level stays the same. In messy actual practice, it would go down a little, at least at first, as some of the internal parts of your body expanded without expanding the outside. Other than your lungs and any intestinal gas, there's not much "empty" space inside your body, but some of it is somewhat compressible, like a sponge. At some point, however, that would stop and the water level would stay the same as you kept drinking and your body expanded accordingly.

Does the observed state of a particle at a given time affect future evolutions in its wave function?

I'm struggling to reconcile the physical and mathematical interpretations of the evolution of quantum particles. If an individual particle can be observed in a random (but predictable) state, does this observed state affect the probability of it being found in a given future state? If so, how can the properties of the wave function evolve deterministically?

If you know the initial state of the particle and you allow it to undergo unitary time evolution, you can determine what its state will be at any subsequent time using the time-dependent Schrodinger equation. The state at some time in the future will in general be different for different initial conditions.

Postdoc question: are you being told how long of a lunch break and break to take?

Asking a Q for a friend. What are your breaks like? Do you have to follow a lab schedule imposed by the manager of the lab who is NOT your supervisor? My friend was contracted to work from 9-5 daily and was told that there are rules to follow. Some examples: (1) lunch break 45 minutes - if late an email will arrive to let him know that break is 45 minutes not 50 minutes; (2) he gets to take two breaks every day totalling 15 minutes a day between 9-5. (3) Needs doctor's notes if he wants to take a break of more than 15 minutes. (4) Cannot take naps (to clarify, he can use that 45 minute to take naps). (5) If he arrives 10 minutes late, he has to work 10 minutes more by end of the day. Also the person who does this basically looks at him all the time to track his movement and how many breaks he takes. It's an open cubicle and there are only undergraduate students around and another postdoc. All this was not communicated before signing a contract - the only rule given was that he has to work 36-ish hours per week. Do you think he should talk to HR?

Most postdocs have pretty minimal oversight -- check-ins once or twice a week (or sometimes even less) unless you're really actively collaborating on something. What you're describing is absolutely fucking nuts, not normal.

Was anything useful learned by all the human experimentation conducted by Germans and Japanese during WWII?

There was. Almost all the knowledge on how the body reacts to freezing temperatures was from these experiments. Along with how the human body reacts to phosgene gas, reaction of the human body to altitude/low pressure and an advancement in sulfonamide antibiotics. With these comes the ethical dilemma about the use of this data. Some scientists argue that the data was gained at too high a price for it to be used, especially scientists with Jewish origin. I, however, argue that the data is too valuable to disregard. The past cannot be changed. The dead cannot be resurrected or the suffering they were endured undone. If lives can be saved using this data, then it should be used. Make no mistake, these men were monsters and these experiments shouldn't have been conducted. Unfortunately, they were conducted, but that doesn't diminish the value the data.

Do electrons physically spin the way wheels and tops spin? Or does the word spin mean something different when it comes to electrons?

They say electrons can have a spin of +1/2 or -1/2. Does this number represent how the electron rotates about an axis, or does it mean something else? What do the numbers +1/2 and -1/2 mean; why couldn't they have used +1 and -1 instead?

Different people will give different answers, because it has been taught differently over the years in introductory quantum mechanics classes. Current sophomore-level quantum mechanics dogma is that spin is an intrinsic quantity unrelated to anything you've ever encountered in the macroscopic world, and indeed that is a good way to learn it at that level -- because quantized angular momentum works a bit differently from the classical case that everyone is familiar with by their teen years, and breaking the intuitions built up from macroscopic experience is a major part of the quantum mechanics curriculum. Upper-division and graduate-level quantum mechanics classes cover spherical harmonic interference in more detail (spherical harmonics are functions that are to spherical coordinates what the sinusoids are to cartesian coordinates), and it becomes more obvious that the electron wave functions rotate around the origin just as do wave functions of more complicated objects (such as wheels) -- it's just that they are restricted by the single-value rule from any amount of spin other than +1/2 or -1/2 quantum of angular momentum around any axis. The relationship between the electron's angular momentum and magnetic moment is "anomalous" -- it does not correspond to the relationship you would find for a massy sphere filled with charge, nor for a massy sphere covered with charge on its surface. It corresponds closely to the relationship you would find for a tiny cylinder covered on the curved surface with charge. A very counterintuitive element of electron spin is that electrons always have to spin. Angular momentum comes in quanta, so you can only gain or lose angular momentum in integer amounts of the universal quantum of angular momentum. But the electron happens to intrinsically contain half of that quantum -- so it can never achieve zero angular momentum. The +1/2 and -1/2 numbers refer to how many quanta of angular momentum the electron is carrying, along a particular axis (which is usually obvious from context -- e.g. along or against a magnetic field, or along or against the bulk angular momentum of an atom that contains the electron). The whole point is that the electron can never be *not* spinning along *any* axis -- at best it can be in a superposed state where it's turning both clockwise and anticlockwise around that axis, with probability 0.5 for each case. If you measure the spin (say) along the Z axis, you'll find that it is either CW or CCW about the Z axis -- and if you measure it again (say) along the Y axis, you'll find that it is either CW or CCW about that axis, too. See, counterintuitive.

Would high levels of radiation mutate animals and plant life like we see in the video game 'Fallout' and 'Metro: Last Light'? [Biology]

I am fairly sure everything would just die. I'm no expert though.

Increased radiation might increase numbers of mutations per generation such that animals are able to adapt and change more rapidly to environmental pressures, and a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland could provide quite an intense selection pressure for massive adaptations. On time scales of tens of thousands to millions of years, you could see quite impressive genetic drift, in theory. However, the sorts of immediate changes you see in games like fallout are not reasonable. High levels of radiation doesn't turn people into Ghouls, for example, it just turns them into corpses. So you wouldn't get giant ants and scorpions (which aren't even reasonable from a physics standpoint), or most of the other things you see in fallout games.

Political Philosophy: Equality of Punishment?

Equality of justice is supposed to be a fundamental aspect of democratic societies. But it seems there are many difficulties in actually implementing it. Let's say there's a law that punishes a crime with imprisonment of 3 months. Now for two different persons, this punishment can have different costs. One of them may have a family to take care of, an examination to appear in that would affect his career significantly or other promises/contracts to keep. The other person may not have similar obligations. Therefore, the punishment, although equal in duration, will have completely different costs to these two convicts who committed an identical crime. This becomes a very real issue when we consider fines. Let's say there's a 100$ fine for speeding. Now to someone rich, 100$ is bare change while to someone who only had 100$ to get some urgent medicine for himself, the effective costs are huge. Clearly, the law has affected them unequally. EDIT: On the other hand, if the fines are made proportional to wealth, the system will have incentives to target the rich. How can we actually achieve "equality of justice"?

many countries calculate fines on (serious) traffic violations as percentage of income, or a combination of fixed amount+percentage of income. the process is usually automated, so incentives to target "the rich" are not realy a problem. the reasoning behind all this is not necessarily to achieve equality in justice, but rather that not doing so would not have a deterrent effect on wealthy people.

Atomic Orbital Theory, Molecular Orbital Theory, Valence Bond Theory.

What are the differences between these three theories?

All three are models of the wave-particle duality of electrons in an atom, and are essentially related to one another. Atomic orbital theory is used to describe the energetic nature of electrons in a single atom; molecular orbital theory (related to VB theory) qualifies these wave interactions between multiple atoms in a molecule with mathematical equations (the shapes assumed by the orbitals) and quantifies them in terms of energy (in the form of an energy diagram). Source: student in inorganic chemistry. :)

What material properties dictate what color that material is?

I get that the color an object is is simply the wavelength of light that is reflected by that object, and other wavelengths are absorbed. But what dictates which frequencies are reflected and which are absorbed? With something like paint for instance, the material seems to be identical, so what is the difference between them that changes which wavelength is reflected?

This is a huge and complex field and the exact mechanism varies from material to material. There are a handful of general effects that can contribute to giving a certain material the appearance of a certain color: - Absorption: the conversion of certain colors of light to heat - Transmission/Refraction/Dispersion: the passing along and bending of certain colors - Specular reflection: the mirror reflection of certain colors - Diffuse reflection: the spread out reflection of certain colors - Rayleigh scattering: the long-wavelength scattering of certain colors - Interference/Diffraction: the interaction of different colors of light with each other - Incandescence: the glowing of a material because of its temperature in a broad thermal spectrum - Fluorescence: the glowing of a material when excited by ultraviolet light The core physical mechanisms underlying a lot of these physical effects include: - electron molecular transitions - electron band transitions - molecular rotational transitions - molecular vibrational transitions - geometry of the material's surface structure

ELI5: When we learn a new word/term from a T.V show or game, we start seeing it frequently after that. Why does that happen?

It happened to me a lot. I find a new word, I look it up and then I start seeing/noticing in other stuff a lot.

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, also known as the frequency illusion, is a psychological effect that causes newly-discovered concepts to seem to pop up in an observer's life with increased frequency. It is a combination of selective attention and cognitive bias that appears to increase the likelihood of an occurrence.

CMV: There is no room for (societal) morality in the bedroom between consenting adults

Hi All, So I'm gonna be honest, this is a pretty new view of mine and I want it to be challenged prior to developing my full feelings on it. This is a sort of off-shoot of the dozens of "not dating a trans person is transphobic" threads we've been seeing on the sub lately. Please forgive me if I have some trouble properly expressing this viewpoint in an understandable way, like i said it's new and I'm not totally sure about it. ​ ​ Basically, In the various trans threads, a common issue seems to pop up: A cis het person understands themselves to not be transphobic, yet they won't date a trans person (even one who is practically indistinguishable from their preferred birth-sex). The case is then made that if that person refuses to date a trans person on grounds that are not incidental (such as wanting to have children, liking the feel of natural genitals, etc), but rather strictly because they are trans, then they are transphobic. There then proceeds to be a back and forth between the commenters arguing either position. The cis het person might argue that, because sex and dating is exclusionary, they are not obligated to be attracted to a trans person, and the reason why doesnt matter. The opposing view might argue that, by not being inclusive of dating a trans person (who, by all accounts is indistinguishable from a cis het person), they are being transphobic by not actually viewing that person as the sex that they identify as, and as such, they are being immoral and harming the trans community. ​ ​ I believe that sex and a relationship between two consenting adults has absolutely no obligation to abide by any societal mores. Basically, it's nobody's business to judge someone for who they decide to have sex or not have sex with. To go further, let's say a white person and a black person were in a relationship with each other. Neither of them are racist, but because of the weird way that kinks and fetishes work, let's say they are both into race-play. This attitude is strictly kept between these two individuals and only during sex (i.e the actions they employ during their "kinkier" sessions absolutely do not represent their actual views on race). Similarly, it's not OK to call women sluts in society, but if two consenting adults liked to do that during sex, then neither any individuals nor society at large is harmed. ​ To bring this back to the trans dating issue, I believe that if a cis het person doesn't want to date a trans person, then their reasoning DOESN'T MATTER, so long as they still respect and accept trans people. Sexuality is weird, and it's unfair to levy criticisms and judgements into the relationship of two consenting adults who may express sexual sentiments that are contrary to what they believe in the context of society.

Your examples are fair, but surely there are some examples that aren't. Incest, adultery, bug-chasing, and bestiality might be some good examples where all the people in the bedroom are consenting adults yet society can absolutely disapprove.

ELI5: How can they tell that a huge wildfire, burning hundreds of thousands of acres, was started by a single campfire, or dropped cigarette?

Surely whatever evidence was there is long gone?

Fire investigators can tell which directing fires burned. With that knowledge that can get pretty close to the point of origin. Once there, they do some investigating. I live in California and the Rim fire WAS suspected of being started by Marijuana growers. That's what the news said but fire officials have stated the origin is very steep and would not be a good place to grow weed. One scientist has said it's possible the fire was ignited by a rock slide. Two rocks slamming into each other can cause sparks and it's been pretty dry up here.

How do cells 'know their location' and grow to make reproducible complex shapes such as a heart?

It is a hard question to phrase but I'll try my best. For example how does the [arota](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Diagram_of_the_human_heart_%28cropped%29.svg/400px-Diagram_of_the_human_heart_%28cropped%29.svg.png) in the heart grow on the exact same place of the heart with relatively the same shape, diameter, same 3 ports on the top of aorta, etc. How does the heart always get its distinct shape? If you look from the perspective of the cell's point-of-view the bottom and the top of the heart look the same. All that the cell sees is a few other heart cells near it, it would seem that it couldn't tell if its on the top or bottom. How does the heart know to stop growing in size? 'There is no cell that can see/sense the heart as a whole' and determine the heart is fully developed. Do we know what in DNA codes for shape and more importantly how that process is actually carried out through biochemistry. I just used the heart as an example. Maybe a better example is how the ear grows is distinct folds and lobes. Or how teeth grow into their shape (think of the top of a molar) and consider that the enamel isn't even cellular.

Chemistry. Seriously. Different cells have different receptors and chemical signals which it uses to produce other chemicals which are signals for other cells. Based on these signals, certain reactions happen; whether that's to drop most organelles in the cell and increase the number of hemoglobins to become a blood cell, or to elongate and become a neuron - it's all based on chemical signals. Evolution, over time, has dictated which cells form into what kinds based on which nearby signals. It's like a giant computer system, but instead of all 1s and 0s, there's thousands of different chemicals which produce the results.

[Comics] can super heroes work out and increase their strength proportionately to regular humans?

I don’t know how many planets Superman would need to bench to even break a sweat, but assuming he COULD work out, could he get 3-4 times stronger than he already is, the way human weightlifters are roughly 3-4 times stronger than a slob who just sits on the couch? Like if Peter Parker is a scrawny teen, gets bitten by a spider and can lift 12 tons, can he work out and eventually lift 48 tons? Or does his strength sort of go with his powers, and it just amplified what he had? Like if flash Thompson had been bitten he’d be 2-3 times stronger than Peter-Spiderman but that’s it?

Most of the ones who have some sort of supernatural (as in, they have some sort of powers that give them super-strength, as opposed to someone like Batman or even Captain America whose strength is defined as "peak human" despite usually being shown to be superhuman to some degree) strength don't usually get the benefits of working out to increase said strength, no. Their utilization of their maximum strength gets better through experience, not through any strength training.

ELI5: The difference between disease, disorder, and syndrome.

* disease - a dysfunction in the body, can be used to specifically refer to those caused by an infectious agent * disorder - a dysfunction in the body, can be used to specifically refer to those **not** caused by an infectious agent * syndrome - a set of symptoms commonly associated with each other, often used as a placeholder term until the cause is better understood There is a lot of overlap between these terms for historical reasons. With a syndrome that has been around for a while, like Down syndrome, that term might continue to be used even if it more properly could be styled a disorder. Similarly, some disorders are later found to be caused by infections but keep their names.

Why is it that some thin plastics tear very easily once started but are very resistant to a tear starting?

A good example of this is in plastic grocery bags, which are made of low-density polyethylene (LDPE). Normally, LDPE has a very low crystallinity; the polymer chains aren't aligned in any particular manner. However, when you start to tear/stretch the plastic, you're sort of pulling some of the chains into alignment. This results in some crystal formation, with two effects: a) the LDPE turns increasingly opaque, since light scatters more at crystal boundaries, and b) the LDPE becomes harder to tear, because crystals are usually stronger than amorphous material.

ELI5: Why is it that TV shows which make profit require release forms, whereas news broadcasts do not; yet they also make profit?

It bothers me a little bit.

The two things you describe are Commercial and Editorial. Commercial works require a release from the person on the screen. These can be works of fiction. Their main goal is to provide entertainment in a fictional manner. Editorial works do not require a release and are generally for telling the "facts", like reporting the news.

CMV: Person who make false rape allegations should face the same charges as the other would if convicted

As the title says, *any person who makes false rape allegations should face the same penalties as the person who they made them about would if they were convicted. When a person is convicted of rape, they’re on a sex offender registry for life, face years in prison, and will likely never be the same. A false accusation is enough to ruin a persons life even if they’re found innocent due to changing views of community and family, lost opportunities, and general distrust resulting from the false claims. A person making a false allegation is willingly choosing to ruin another’s life, and as a murderer is met with death, I think the person who makes that accusation needs to have the charges reversed.

How would you propose that is managed? Does any accusation without enough evidence get classed as false and result in the accuser being jailed or is there a separate trial after the main one to prove it false. How could you prove if false? If the only requirement is that the defendant not eb found guilty then this would discourage a lot of people coming forward with genuine rape claims given they face jail if there is not enough evidence (which is hard to come by in a situation that usually only includes 2 people in a room). Also worth noting instances of false accusations are really low and not something that happens anywhere near as much as actual rapes.

[The Matrix] Question about the Oracle.

Can the Oracle actually tell the future, or is she able to predict what will happen simply because she has already been through 6 versions of the Matrix?

The Oracle is an intuitive, predictive algorithm with enough data and enough processing power to "guess" with near 100% accuracy. She was created to help the Architect construct a Matrix that the human mind would accept, and to balance the equation that resulted in previous versions of the Matrix becoming unstable, resulting in the manifestation of the One. The machines assumed that she would help eliminate whatever it is about the human psyche that craves freedom; they believed she would help turn humanity into happy slaves. However, she realized that the only way to truly end the war was to allow the resistance to win; to force the machines to let go anyone that was on the verge of waking up. The entire plot of the first three movies was part of her plan. She knew that Thomas Anderson was the One who would balance the equation in this iteration of the Matrix, that Morpheus would find him, and that Trinity would fall in love with him. She knew that Agent Smith would revolt against the machines and try to take over the Matrix for himself, she knew that Neo's code signature would destroy him, and she knew that Neo would be willing to sacrifice himself to do so. *Could* things have gone differently? Yes. She isn't omniscient. This is stated outright in the first movie: Neo asks "And she knows what? Everything?" Morpheus replies, "She would say she knows enough." There are gaps in her knowledge and errors in her algorithms, but she has *so much* data, and such deep insight both into human and machine psychology, that she appears, for all intents and purposes, to see the future.

ELI5: A.I. "was never shown what walking looked like" and yet "taught itself to walk"

[This animation of an AI "learning" to walk.](https://gfycat.com/FirsthandUniformArchaeopteryx) * What does it mean that the AI was "never shown what walking looks like". Wouldn't the programmers have to provide a finite number of possible configurations of parts, or simple limitations, which would effectively feed the AI the answer to "this is walking"? * What does it mean to "incentivise" AI? Is that an attempt to anthropomorphize the act of giving instruction? Is it actually an incentive for the AI, like a cookie is an incentive for a toddler? Or is it just a command?

The programmers start by setting up an environment--some sort of basic physics engine, much like you might find in a modern game. Within this engine, they design the physical structure of the model that they want to walk--it gets arms and legs, with physical properties like strength and inertia. From there the AI's job is to take some information about the state of the model and use that to come up with how hard it should pull or push each joint. To say that the AI wasn't "shown how to walk" this means that the programmers didn't go in and say "walking consists of moving legs back and forth, alternating, while swinging your arms back and forth." A traditional approach would start from some basic motion profile like this, then let the AI learn how to tweak that profile in response to what simulated robot senses. This AI was given no such starting point and it's likely that the first approaches looked more like seizures and first-time player of QWOP than anything remotely resembling walking. The incentives come into play as the AI learns. Many AI approaches consist of trying different things, measuring which ones performed best, then tweaking the best performing options. For this kind of approach you need some way to identify something as "best." For these AIs this seems to have been a simple distance measurement. To see something similar done you should check out www.boxcar2d.com. To draw parallels, this AI seeks to build a car with no idea what cars look like, with the incentive of traveling to the right on the screen. At first the guesses are horribly mangled garbage, but after a few generations they start to look remarkably car shaped and they start managing to cover an impressive distance.

What is a good, challenging topic for a Bachelor Thesis?

So I'm in my fourth and last year of undergrad at a University in Europe. In order to graduate, weare required to write and present a senior/bachelor/undergrad research thesis/paper. We have to get a professor to advise and lead us, do our own research, be thorough... Key requirement is obviously some form of econometrics in it, be it a simple model or a thorough application. Obviously, the better and closer it is to an actual paper, the better grade we will get. I want to finish things off the right way, so I want to challenge myself to write a good thesis. The top papers get a small recognition and besides, I want it for myself. I'm gonna pursue a PhD and so I would like it to be a first good step in economic research. The only problem is, I can't come up with a good topic that isn't repetitive (each year a lot of theses cover very common stuff like effects of minimum wage on economy X, TPF differences, effects of education...). I'm not trying to shoot for the moon here, I just want to be a bit more original. A lot of older guys told me look for something easy and that I can get data for quickly, but I don't want it to be easy. If I can impress the committee and create something good, I'll be satisfied. I've taken many econ courses, done a study abroad, explored different areas and I have specially taken a lot of econometrics, math and stats courses (Stats I and II, Calculus I and II, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Econometrics I, Time Series, Advanced Econometrics, Microeconometrics, Applied econometrics) (yes my school has a good metrics program). I have also taken other econ and applied econ courses (Game Theory, Dynamic Macro, Behavioral, IO, Advanced IO, natural resources and environmental econ, labor market discrimination econ, development econ, intl trade, regional and urban...). I've also taken finance and data mining courses. If I had to choose a few of these that I "love" (although there's no such thing as an econ course I disliked), I would say anything math-intensive, like anything econometrics, Game Theory and Behavioral. As for model-based courses or applied econ, I loved nonmarket valuation (environmental and natural resources) and Labor (although I don't want to turn to cuteonomics). I know I have to come up with the topic myself and not ask around, but I would love some insight from other people who had to do the same thing or that can just chip in with thoughts.

I had a chance to talk with one of Harvard’s head policy professors (I don’t want to give too much info out for ID purposes but can talk to a mod to confirm) about a similar topic, and he suggested the footnotes and last few pages of current research papers. He said that often, these are where researchers write their curiosities or unresolved questions. You won’t find a new topic in a research paper because you’re reading a paper after it’s answered the question.

Considering the Higgs field permeates all of space how is it related to a vacuum?

Is the Higgs a by-product of a vacuum? I've read that the Higgs is "the energy of the vacuum from which all else came." Can someone explain this? Why did a vacuum exist in the first place? Does the universe exist within a vacuum? Any thoughts on the idea that matter is a 3-D representation of 2-D information?

In field theory, we work with it being given that there are space and time. The *vacuum* is the field configuration that minimizes the energy. It turns out that it takes less energy to have a non-zero value of the Higgs field throughout space than it would to have no Higgs field. Thus the vacuum in the Standard Model is space filled with a non-zero Higgs field.

CMV: I should not be prosecuted if I join another country's army.

I'm not talking about situations involving dual-citizenship or joining something like Daesh (which is not a recognised military force of a known country but a terrorist organisation). In this case I'm specifically referencing a situation where, for example, I go off to Russia (an internationally recognised country) to fight. I am a British citizen, and I hold a British passport. Under current legislation, it is technically possible under an archaic law regarding registration with a foreign army that I could be arrested upon re entry to the UK and subject to prosecution. Using Russia as an example here, I see no reason why this should be the case. Britain has no hostile intent or activity towards Russia at the present (even I'd consider fighting for a country that is hostile to UK as a crime), and my presence in any conflict as a Russian fighter would likely not harm British interests. Even if this were the case, my actions shouldn't be wholly dependant on geopolitical decisions I have no part in. Also, I feel it should be my free choice to declare an allegiance to any country I please, in any manner I choose including choosing to put my life on the line. I do not feel that simple ownership of a country's passport should compel me to **automatically** give my allegiance to that country. So, CMV! EDIT: Added a detail. _____ > *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*

Whether you want them to or not, the actions you take while you hold that passport may very well affect the country that issued it to you. Say you're captured with that passport and those who capture you find it on your person. From their perspective, it's entirely plausible that you have been sent by your country or that your country is somehow supporting you in what you do. (Think about it...you look *exactly* like a spy and your excuse is exactly the one a clandestine agent would use.) That makes your country of origin politically liable for what you've done. They'll be called to explain why a British citizen is fighting in war X and a demand will be made that the British government either disavow your citizenship, support your citizenship (and tacitly endorse whoever you're fighting for) or support your citizenship and make what you've done with it a crime. Laws like this serve two purposes: they allow the government to punish behavior that runs counter to their political goals and to minimize the liability of the entire country when one person decides to inject themselves in the affairs of other countries.

[Terminator 2] is there an in-lore reason why the T-1000 always changes back to the policeman?

In popular culture, at least, police officers were considered trustworthy and authoritative. If you're looking to move through American society with a minimum of fuss and a significant amount of power, you can't do much better than doing so as a cop. People tend to avoid confrontation and obey orders when given by a uniformed police officer. So it's an effective disguise.

ELI5: Hobbes vs Rosseau debate

Came across this while watching Crash Course Big History, and now I'm interested. But most stuff on google requires a great deal of prior understanding of the subject. Could someone explain this for me like I'm five? Thanks

Well, there's a lot of ways that they differed in their philosophy, but probably the most clear distinction is where they both came down on the relationship between what they conceived of as the "natural state of man" and society. At the time, one of the big questions in sociology was what people would be like if society didn't exist. What was the state of the "natural man" outside of civilization? (Modern sociologists basically reject this idea entirely, arguing instead that society is itself innate to human nature, but anyway.) Hobbes takes a rather pessimistic view of human nature and argues that without the laws, expectations, and morals of society, humans would live in a state of natural war and brutality, because people are naturally selfish. There's a lot more to say here, but this is the most important way that he differs from Rousseau, who, by contrast, argues for a "noble savage" idea. Rousseau answers the same question by arguing that all the wants and desires that people have which make them selfish and violent are actually unnatural, and are imparted by society. In a natural state, without society telling us what to want, humans would want for nothing and thus live in natural harmony. So to summarize - Hobbes = people bad, society good, because it restrains people; Rousseau = people good, society bad, because it corrupts people.

Is there a reason dictionaries of philosophy are not widely used or mentioned?

I've noticed that there are no dictionaries of philosophy online and not too many have been published. I've just finished a paper on The Transcendental Deduction and found myself wanting for explicitly defined terminology. I suspect its due to a lack of consensus and the complexity of some terms. Can anyone confirm this? Is it considered poor form to search explicitly for the definitions of philosophical terms?

Don't go to papers if you want to define terms, go to encyclopedias, e.g. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (preferably the former if it the entry isn't too difficult). Going into a paper and looking for definitions is difficult in every discipline (e.g. you're expected to know what DAPI and actin are if you're in cell bio).

ELI5: can someone explain Dr. Hawking's concept of "Imaginary Time" like I'm 5? What does it exactly mean in laymen's terms?

Okay, think about it this way. Imagine that you want to specify exactly where and when something happened. So, first you have to put it somewhere on earth: You need longitude (how far East or West from a specific place) and latitude (how far North or South from a specific place). So you have two separate measurements you need to take to put something at a particular place on the earth's surface. (also up-down, if you want to worry about being above sea level). For time, we usually have only one line we worry about : Past-Future. What Hawking is saying is that in order to do certain kinds of physics, it might be useful to have a second line that *behaves like* our normal time-line, the Past-Future line, but is as distinct from it from it as the East-West line is from the North-South line. So, just like the East-West and North-South lines are sort of similar in how we interact with them, but perpendicular to each other (but very different in behavior from the time-line) - the regular Past-Future line and the "Imaginary Past-Imaginary Future" line would be similar in the way they behave, but treated as "perpendicular" to each other in calculations. Why "imaginary"? Because there's a kind of numbers called imaginary numbers, and you work with them by taking the normal number line, and putting another number line perpendicular to that, which is called the imaginary "axis" (another word for line). So now you're probably wondering what it would "feel like" to deal with two different kinds of time ... at the same time. And there's no real answer to that, because we're only made to experience our one kind of time, and this "imaginary time" is mainly talked about to help understand certain physics calculations about the beginning of the universe - it's not something we could experience ourselves.

CMV: The idea that "bans don't work because criminals don't obey laws" is a bad argument, and it makes no sense.

Firstly, most criminals are not going to go to extreme lengths to commit crimes. They are opportunists. If it's easy and they can get away with it then more people will do it. If it's hard and they'll get caught, fewer people will do it. Secondly, people are pointing to failures in enforcement, and citing them as a failure of the law in general. Of course if you don't arrest or prosecute people they'll commit more crimes. That's not a failure of the law itself. Thirdly, if you apply that argument to other things you'd basically be arguing for no laws at all. You would stop banning murder and stealing, since "bans don't work" and "criminals don't follow laws." We'd basically be in The Purge. Fourthly, laws can make it harder for criminal activity by regulating the behavior of law abiding people. An example is laws making alcohol sellers check ID. The reason I want to CMV is because this argument is so prevalent, but not convincing to me. I would like to know what I am missing.

Bans can be effective. We’ve successfully banned access to things in the past, it’s rare to see criminals using heavy weaponry, like grenades and rocket launchers in the US. We’ve banned lead paints and ozone depleting chemicals pretty effectively. We’ve also founds bans to be ineffective, for things like alcohol (Prohibition era). Whether or not a ban on X is effective really comes down to the ability to effectively enforce a ban. For something like alcohol and drugs, it’s really hard to enforce. Enforcing Prohibition was effectively impossible

What do you say when someone says studying Philosophy is useless?

Theres always a surprise when I say I'am studying Philosophy, as opposed to Business/Scientific related fields. I've always maintained that it is the study of all fields, and about yourself but there seems to such a huge stigma involved. Theres no right or wrong answer so in the end it is useless to study. It is as if you are going around in a huge circle with no end in sight, and that Philosophers have not done anything in so far to help mankind to date since Aristotle/Kant. I feel as that they are wrong, that they have not looked into Philosophy but only at the name, and brush it off as rubbish. Can someone give a explanation of how Philosophy/Philosophers have helped or impacted our time? I appreciate everyone taking the time to read this post, and put their input. Thanks.

Ask them how they know what is useful and what is not. Before they answer, tell them that they are about to do one of two things: 1) use philosophy, or 2) say something someone else told them to say, and therefore something they themselves know nothing about.

[Fallout 4] Who taught the inhabitants of the Commonwealth to read and write?

Their parents? Their family? Their community? Their school, if they're lucky enough to have one? The signs, journals, books, and ads plastered all over the world? It's not like all human knowledge was wiped out and they crawled out of nothingness from a rock. They learned from their parents who learned from theirs who learned from theirs. How did you think a real-world person learns? Its the same thing.

[SCP Foundation] What the Foundation do when a sapient SCP shows extreme signs of distress and depression caused by it's imprisonment ?

Depends on its classification. they wouldn't give two fucks if a Keter class was getting depressed. They make make concessions for helpful Elucid, and would probably be rather accommodating to Safe classed SCPs.

ELI5: how does a cut finger get resewn back on with full functionality?

Using microsurgery. The surgeon uses very fine sutures to reattach nerves and blood vessels. For the surgery to be fully successful, the detached part of the finger must be kept cool an surgery must take place as soon as possible.

CMV: Cultural Appropriation as in Wearing clothes/accessories of minority cultures outside of their intended purpose is not bad enough to limit the freedom to wear what you want

This is coming from a member of the most privileged group of people in the world: a straight white cisgender male, 21 years old. After having read a lot about cultural appropriation I understand that e.g. wearing a native american headdress as a festival accessory is considered a bad and offensive thing to do. This is because you use an object that is very important and has significant cultural meaning in a completely different way than originally intended. And plainly, I agree. However, and this is my hot take, as long as you are not actively mocking the affected culture by e.g. performing/saying/acting stereotypical things, I think that is not bad enough to justify the restriction towards your freedom to wear what you want. I am german. If someone would go around wearing leather pants and a checkered shirt, holding a jug of beer in one hand and a bratwurst in a bun in the other, and being overly drunk and annoying, i couldn't care less. In my opinion people can wear whatever they want (with restrictions on racism, fascism etc., which already exist in society). Now maybe that is just because german culture isn't very important to me. A Person originating from the orient may hold their culture in high regards, and therefore see someone wearing the stereotypical disney belly dancer outfit as very much offensive. I am aware that it alienates minorities from their own culture, which is of course a bad thing. Maybe, it's just the perspective I am missing. Staying with the example of the disney belly dancer outfit, this is a very good example for the mixing of cultures. Disney picks up on the works of Orientalism and creates their own view of this outfit. Now I only speak of the outfit, not the movie and the actions performed in that movie associated with it. I love mixing of cultures. It creates interesting new things to see, explore and talk about. It gives people more artistic freedom. It's like adding a whole new palette of colors to a painters disposal. And it's the same with pieces of clothing and accessories. Because of this reason alone, offending a minority is justified. of course, the same goes the other way around, from minorities including majorities culture outside of it's originally intended purpose. Now please try your best to rid me of that opinion, I sometimes have the feeling this whole viewpoint is very egotistic, and even racist. ​ TL;DR: My point being, for the sake of creativity and progression of human culture, wearing clothes/accessories of minority cultures outside of their intended purpose is justified. Not good, in fact a bad thing, but not bad enough to be a reason to infringe your creativity.

It just really depends on what the garment is, and what it does or does not represent. Something like a Japanese *kimono* or *yukata*, does not have a particular sacred or special cultural status. They are pretty, formal clothing worn for special occasions. For this reason, tourists visiting Japan will find rental companies offering the chance for visitors to dress up and take photos while wearing these. (This is very popular with visitors from other Asian nations like China or Vietnam) Now take Thailand as another example. You might find a few shops offering rental of traditional Thai clothing. You will not however find orange monks robes offered for tourist pictures. Likewise, you will not find these items for sale in souvenir markets etc. This mode of dress does have a sacred connotation, and thus is only appropriate for a monk to wear. When discussing this whole thing, it would help if we didn't just lump every type of cultural garb into one category. Wearing a Scots kilt, or a German lederhosen, or a Vietnamese Ao Dai is fine. It's just fashion. Wearing a police or army uniform, a priest or monks robes, or certain crowns, head gear or tattoos etc which represent particular statuses or achievements might not be. >wearing clothes/accessories of minority cultures What the hell is a minority culture? China? India? Arabic? There's a hell of a lot more of those guys than Germans.

ELI5: Where did all the last names come from?

Who made them all up? I know people used to be named according to their home, like Jesus of Nazareth, but where did all of the ones in existence today come from? How are new last names added over time?

There are many naming traditions throughout the world. Many English names reflect jobs. Remember that before public schools existed, boys (who spread the last name) would generally become apprentices of their father and learn his trade, take over after his death and teach their own sons, and so on. So it made sense for a person's last name to reflect their occupation, because the occupation was also hereditary. This is where we get names like John *Carpenter*, Sue *Gardener*, Robert *Plant*, James *Cook*, Anna *Smith*, and so on. Some of these jobs no longer exist; a cooper was someone who made barrels, a fletcher was someone who made arrows, a thatcher was someone who made rooves, and those are all common surnames. Some names still reflect places, like George Washington (where 'ton' is *town*, George from Washing-town). Other names reflect the name of the father; Thomas *Jefferson* (Jeffery's-son), Jack *Williamson* (William's-son), and so on. In Iceland, this actually applies directly to the parent, rather than carrying one name perpetually; Bjork's last name is Guomundsdottir (Guomond's-daughter), and her child could be called Karen Bjorkdottir (Bjork's-daughter), and her grandson could be Bjorn Karenson (Karen's-son), etc.

Designing a Tax System for the United States

If you had the ability to design a tax system for the United States, what types of taxes would you use? Which methods of taxation would bring in the most revenue?

For the federal government: 1. Land Value Tax, divided between a dividend for every citizen, local, state, and federal governments. It should target at least 25-50% of the economic rent of the unimproved value of land. This is going to bring in a lot of money and would make up the biggest source of revenue. 2. Pollution pricing. The prices per ton would vary between types of pollution, but an important thing here is to aggressively tax greenhouse gas emissions. A portion would be added to the aforementioned dividend for everyone and the rest toward general revenue. 3. Income taxes, progressively increasing from NIT (negative income tax) to 10 or 15% 4. Inheritence tax, as it exists now

Why does the multiverse theory have an infinite number of universes?

Every time I see the multiverse theory mentioned on TV, movies, books, comics, etc. they have the same basic concept of infinite universes, some very like ours, some very different. While the idea that there are different universes with different laws of physics sits fine with me, the concept of there being one universe exactly like mine but I'm made of corn, in another the only difference is I have a different colour shirt on, etc. seems ridiculous. Why does the theory have 'infinite' rather than many universes?

A cosmos which produced *all possible* universes would be a simpler thing than a cosmos which produced *only some* possible universes. The first one requires only a rule or pattern that produces universes, the second also requires additional rules to identify which ones actually get produced. Let's look at a 'Level I' multiverse to illustrate this : > Level I: A generic prediction of cosmological inflation is an infinite ergodic universe, which contains Hubble volumes realizing all initial conditions - including an identical copy of you about 10^10^29 meters away Translated, that means: the universe is infinite, but the observable universe isn't. Let's abuse tterminology and call the observable universe the "universe", and the universe the "multiverse" - we can never ever get to the other "universes", there are infinitely many of them, and each one contains a collection of interesting galaxies and stars. Exactly what they contain is determined by their initial conditions (in practice, what they were like shortly after the big bang). A universe that started off sufficiently like ours would still be very like ours, although a tiny difference in the starting state will *eventually* make the two diverge. In some (only a mindbogglingly tiny fraction), that divergence starts to become obvious today, with you picking a different shirt (although the divergence was always there, in fact, we just wouldn't have noticed until today). Once you've picked a diffferent shirt, of course, human histories diverge radically. Different people spend different amounts of time talking to you, which slightly affects traffic flows in your city, which means different people die in car accidents or fall in love or argue with their boss or get pregnant. A week later there are different news headlines, different presidential tweets, different entrepreneurs starting businesses. The weather in a month is noticeably different, in a few decades the climate is. Our technology goes at a different pace, and a different direction. In one universe, our robots are off to colonise a nearby star, in another, we're off, and in a third, the robots are their own and we are no more. To say this is not so, you have to explain why an infinitely large space-time would contain a universe that made you, but *not* others that made an almost-you. You need to specify extra (strange) laws of physics to prevent such a thing from happening.

CMV: Countries with Universal Healthcare fail to produce new vaccines, new medicines, new treatments, and are therefore inferior to the financially corrupt Privatized Healthcare System.

I don't think there's much contention that the privatized healthcare system of the United States frequently leaves people broken and without the care necessary to survive. It is heartless and bureaucratic, and frequently justifies the venom Reddit stores for it. But with Ebola, H1N1, rabies, and outbreaks of the past, I can't recall ever seeing another country with universal healthcare establish the necessary treatment plan and large scale manufacturing of medication to control the problem. YES I completely agree that million dollar medical bills for necessary procedures are outrageous, YES I completely understand that the birth of my own daughter shouldn't have to cost thousands of dollars ... but as corrupt as the financial side of privatized healthcare is, can't it be justified by the unmitigated success of their production? **tl;dr Self interest will always, always, ALWAYS yield more R&D and in the case of diseases where people die, does that not at least assuage SOME of the villainy that always gets draped over privatized healthcare? CMV**

Medical breakthroughs come as a result of laboratory research, mostly basic science research, which is funded almost entirely through national governments. The US produces more medical breakthroughs because it is a large and wealthy country, so the American government funds nearly as much research (in all fields, not just medicine) as the rest of the world combined. As one measure: Americans have won 88 Physics Nobel Prizes and 98 Medicine Nobel Prizes. If the American free market explains all of our medical breakthroughs (remember, breakthroughs conducted at universities with taxpayer money) then what the heck explains that we have contibuted almost exactly the same proportion of Physics breakthroughs?

Why are vintage guitars considered to sound better than modern ones?

Since technology has improved over the last several decades, shouldn't modern guitars sound better as well? I understand the concept of limited supply = higher prices but that doesn't explain why so many people claim that their guitars from the 60s or 70s have a superior tone to their modern counterparts (Les Pauls, Stratocasters, White Falcons, etc).

As the wood ages, the tone generated by the wood changes (usually in a desirable manner). Since the wood in older guitars has aged, the tone from that wood "sounds better". Also, when you are dealing with analog circuitry, there are quirky tones and characteristics generated by the components in those older guitars. Since some of those components (pots, caps, etc...) are not used on newer guitars, some ppl claim that the sound isn't as good. A lot of these nuances can be reproduced by digital modeling, but there will always be those who can "tell the difference."

ELI5: Why haven't other species evolved to be as intelligent as humans?

How come humans are the only species on Earth that use sophisticated language, build cities, develop medicine, etc? It seems that humans are WAY ahead of every other species. Why?

A slightly different answer: Species evolve qualities that are beneficial for survival, and passing on their genes. That's the only reason a particular trait gets selected and passed on in a species. Humans developed large front brains (which make us intelligent), because intelligence confers advantages for surviving and passing on our genes. So, humans developed big, smart brains for the same reason that we developed arms, that rhinos developed thick skin, that alligators developed an incredibly slow metabolism, and that owls developed acute vision. All of these traits are very helpful for helping the creature survive and mate. So, our asking "Why aren't other species as intelligent as us?" is very much like an alligator asking "Why don't other creatures have as slow metabolisms as we do?" or an owl asking "Why can't other creatures see or fly as well as we do?". The answer is that those traits aren't the ones that were helpful for those creatures to survive. Each creature developed the traits it did in order to overcome environmental challenges to survival, and it happens that intelligence was a huge help for primates in trying to survive, but not so much for alligators. Alligators don't need to be able to make tools or to fly to weather their environmental challenges. What would be more helpful is if they could slow their metabolism to the point that they only need to eat about once a year - and this is the trait they developed. The same goes for us. Intelligence is one of many evolutionary tools developed for survival, but by no means the most efficient one. Bacteria - stupid as they are - are better at surviving than we are.

ELI5: In cities with grid layouts, why aren't traffic lights synchronized so that all lights on parallel roads turn green and red at the same times.

For example, all streets that run east/west would be timed the same and opposite from those that run north/south. Seems like this would help reduce gridlock.

Stop lights are timed according to complex studies by transit authority to provide the best traffic flow that causes the least amount of accidents. Science has shown that for the most part that means a "ripple" type cascade of the lights turning in a given direction works better than all lights in that direction going green at once.

ELI5: What determines if something is "microwave safe"?

Microwaves work by causing polar molecules to continuously reorient themselves in the oscillating electric field which causes them to heat up. This field is the result of the microwaves themselves being emitted. One of the most abundant and polar molecules in existence is water. As such, microwaves can be thought of a primarily heating the water in the object and then that water transfers heat to the rest of the object. The tricky thing with plates, bowls, etc. is that some of them are made up of "hydrous" materials, meaning that there is water bonded to their constituent molecules. When this water continuously reorients itself in the electric field, it messes with the constituent molecule and can cause the object to be ruined. Or it can simply heat up the object to the point that it is dangerous to touch. This isn't restricted to water, so if the object has some other polar molecules in its composition, it may still be subject to this phenomenon. It is just most common with water.

ELI5: Why does reading small text hurt our eyes instead of making them stronger?

Your eyes have muscles to point them in the direction you’re looking, and small text doesn’t take up much space in your field of vision, so those muscles need to work hard to keep your eyes pointed at the small text. The muscles just get tired working continuously, but it’s not like it’s a strength exercise that’s going to build them up like your arms.

CMV: I think I should learn what I want to learn in high school.

I'm homeschooled and currently nearing the end of sophomore year of high school. But I'm extremely discouraged because I'm essentially failing at everything but math. The main issue is that my parents are not really a part of my education; I do it on my own. I'm fine with this, except that I really detest the chemistry course I'm supposed to have been doing this year (I haven't even been able to pass any of the later tests), and my history/literature syllabus is really vague and I haven't learned a thing. Also, I've never been taught how to write a paper. All my attempts have been pretty awful, and I can never seem to scrounge up enough stuff to write about. I don't believe I'm actually that bad at writing, it's just that I never write papers about any subject I know anything about. I've talked to my mom multiple times about these issues, and she always just kind of says, "Hmm, well your sister did all right with it". (I have a sister who's a grade above me, also homeschooling). The fact is, I hate chemistry. I greatly respect it, and I understand it is a useful subject to learn... *if you plan on making a career out of it*, which I don't. Which brings me to my next point. What I enjoy doing and learning about is 3D modeling and rendering. I use Blender and I've learned a bunch and gotten good with it. But this counts for absolutely none of my school credit. I have to learn some science that I have essentially zero use for, and won't even fully understand or remember anyway. Algebra I actually get, and it happens to be a little relevant to programming and 3D graphics. Maybe not as much as geometry, but I'll be doing that next year and I'm not worried about it. But I don't remember a bit of the biology I supposedly learned last year, and it looks like my chemistry has gone the same route. I really do *want* to understand chemistry, at least enough to make a passing grade so that I can graduate high school. But I've tried online courses, and none of it has really "clicked". The problem is *partly* that my text book explains things really crappily, but it's also that I just don't care for chemistry. At all. I hear physics won't be as bad, and I'm sort of looking forward to it. Technically I don't even have to do both chemistry and physics; just one or the other. I wish I could just give up on chemistry, go ahead and start physics over the summer so I'm not an entire year behind, and not be judged and frowned upon for not learning this rather irrelevant science. So, the bottom line is, I feel confident about what I want to learn about and do with my life, but apparently it's not OK to learn just the subjects that will be relevant to me and my life. I hear that the education system didn't used to be like this, and that high school used to actually prepare you for a career. I absolutely wish this was the way it was. One more thing, I am posting to /r/changemyview, but this could very well have also been posted to some kind of advice subreddit. I'd love it if you could change my view, but to do that you're going to have to convince me that I'll even be able to graduate, because as it is, my high school education in the eyes of my family (if they even knew how behind I was) would be a huge crumbled mess. Well this has basically been a stream of my thoughts and hasn't been edited for nice readability. I hope I can somehow be at peace and figure out how to get through this. _____ > *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*

A high schooler may think that he or she knows what they want to be when they grow up, but in reality this could easily change as time passes. High school education is designed to allow you to gain a broad enough knowledge base to be able to change career goals if you wanted to while allowing limited directional studies that will be expanded in college.

ELI5: The Chinese Room Thought Experiment.

Was playing "The Turing Test" lately, the game, by Square Enix, and it keeps on mentioning about this "Chinese Room Thought Experiment". Already done the Googling, but I still don't really understand it quite well. Anyone could ELI5 about what is it and what does it do?

It addresses the question of whether a computer program which can carry on a conversation and pass the Turing test would actually be conscious and understand the conversation. Suppose you are locked in a room where a chute delivers cards with Chinese characters on. You speak and read no Chinese, but you have a book of instructions where you can look up the symbols and pick a symbol to pass back through the chute. A Chinese speaker outside the room might pass you a question and receive a sensible answer, and believe that there's a Chinese speaker inside. But you still have no idea what they're asking or what you said, you're just following instructions. If a computer program appears to us to be intelligent, is there a real intelligence inside the box or is the computer just shuffling cards with Chinese characters on?

ELI5:how old ships could see each other at night

how old ships could see each other at night?

Like today ships were required to have lanterns with different colors around the ship to allow nearby ships to see them better. Ships also used lookouts who were not exposed to light so they are accustomed to the dark and can see objects using the stars and moon as lighting. Also a lantern would stick out quite much in a dark environment.

ELI5: What exactly are "natural flavorings" and how are food companies allowed to omit these ingredients from the ingredient list?

Title

FDA standards define "natural flavors" as "the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional." So to simplify that, if it came from a plant or an animal, it can be called "natural flavors" in actuality, its probably something that should be there, like cherry juice in a lollipop. There are some additional requirements though, if the natural ingredient is the only thing making up the flavor, the manufacturer should list its "common name". So if you see natural flavorings vs cherry juice on your candy, its flavored with more than one thing thats naturally derived. The fda does require common allergens to be listed, like nuts, otherwise information can be left out to protect trade secrets.

CMV: Even if the Christian God existed, it would not be worthy of praise and worship

From what I understand, the Christian God is all-powerful and all-knowing. And yet suffering, disease, genocide, etc. exist. The existence of these phenomena would require an all-powerful God to permit them. Therefore, God must permit these hardships for some reason. There is no reason to test humans since God is all-knowing. Also God made everything as it is so there is no reason for anyone to behave other than how God intended, else he would have made them different. I can only conclude that there either is no God, or that there is a God not worthy of admiration and praise. _____ > *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*

If the Christian god exists then it is all knowing. Therefore it's intelligence would not be comparable to our own. You are thinking of the relationship as equals. As if we could some how bargain with this being and attempt to have it see our reasons. But the truth is the relationship would be closer to the relationship between a dog and it's master. A dog is happy that it's fed but it's life is not perfect. It wonders why we torture it by taking it to the evil vet, and it wonders why we don't give it all the food that it desires. It may be angry that we don't take it for walks, and it doesn't understand why we leave every day. But even comparing the relationship of master to dog is not comparable when it comes to the immense difference between God and humans. We could not understand why god does what he does. We could guess. But it would be impossible for us to know. Therefore Christians accept that we can't fathom Gods reasons, and like any good pet we praise our lord and master.

ELI5: Radiocarbon dating is based on the half-life of C14 but how are scientists so sure that the half life of any particular radio isotope doesn't change over long periods of time (hundreds of thousands to millions of years)?

Is it possible that there is some threshold where you would only be able to say "it's older than X"? OK, this may be more of an explain like I'm 15.

It's also worth noting that there are multiple dating methods that overlap. As an example pulled from thin air, one method has a range of 10-400 years, one that's most accurate at 100-5000 years, one for 300-10000 years. A sample dated 350 years ago by all 3 methods means the date is fairly well supported. It also means that the methods are fairly reliable as well. Now multiply this by hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions of samples, each corroborating together to increase the confidence by some amount. Over the years, this builds a really high confidence in the methods.

philosophical novels? apart from the usual Dostoevsky, Camus, kafka etc

Austrian literature is what you're looking for: Thomas Bernhard (*The Loser, Wittgenstein's Nephew*), Elias Canetti (*Auto-da-fe*), Robert Musil (*Man Without Qualities*), Herman Broch (*The Death of Virgil*) and Elfriede Jelinek (*The Piano Teacher*).

How do scientists measure the temperature when trying to get to absolute zero?

Wouldn't the act of measuring the temperature produce heat and how do they get accurate enough to measure it to within a billionth of absolute zero?

At ultra cold scales, you can use indirect methods of measuring temperature, such as measuring electrical resistance, which can change predictably (if not in direct proportion) with temperature. Also, anything that has a temperature above absolute zero emits blackbody radiation. This is how we measure the temperature of gas clouds in space. Doing this on earth would be challenging to measure against the brighter background of a warmer and therefore brighter environment. At really super incredibly cold temperatures, such as those inside a bose-einstein condensate, you can measure the fraction of atoms in the condensate that are not in their ground state with a laser pulse, where absolute zero is where every atom is at its minimum possible energy. I'd be interested in what someone who actually measures these temperatures does, though.

ELI5: When a person gets an organ transplant the body's immune system will reject and attack the organ because of foreign DNA. Why does this not apply to blood transfusions?

It \*does\* apply to blood transfusions. That's why you need to match the blood type. The blood type (A, B, AB, 0 etc.) refers to different kinds of proteins on the surface of the blood cells. If your body detects blood cells of the wrong type, it will attack and destroy them. Blood type 0 does not have any of these proteins on the surface, so people of this type are "universal donors", i.e. their blood can be safely given to all other people regardless of blood type. Conversely, people with blood type AB are "universal recipients". Because their own blood as both type A and type B proteins, their immune system won't attack blood of any type. (Note that this isn't the full story, there are other blood type systems in addition to the AB system.) Bonus info: With organ transfusions, one issue is that the recipient's immune system rejects the organ. But it sometimes happens that the immune cells from the donor that are still in the donated organ start attacking the recipients whole body (graft-vs-host disease)! This doesn't happen with blood transfusions because they typically filter out the white blood cells (immune cells) and only transfer the red blood cells and/or plasma.

ELI5: What actually is stamina, and why can a person run longer after months of running?

Wow this blew up. Thank you for the great submissions and discussions

There are many factors to stamina, but the main one is the ability of the lungs and heart, i.e. the cardiovascular system, to get oxygen to the rest of your body. Cardiovascular exercise, like running, improves the efficiency of that system by strengthening the heart and increasing blood volume

ELI5: How have scientists figured out how many colours an animal can see?

There are two ways of knowing : One is at the microscopical scale by studying cells on the retina, if there are cones we know the animal has some form of color perception, we can study how many cones there are, their location on the retina, all of this gives a good idea of the color perception of the animal The other is by training animals, for example training a bird so that it learns there is food behind a red piece of paper and there is no food behind a blue one. You then put them in front of both a blue and a red piece of paper, and if the animal goes for the red it means it can differentiate the two colors. Of course the actual experimental protocols are more elaborate and changes depending on the animal but you get the main idea !

Why is it problematic that extremely wealthy people have so much money if the economy is not a zero sum game?

At least I THINK it’s not a zero sum game.

"What causes wealth inequality?" is a positive economic question that can be answered objectively. "How should wealth be redistributed?" is a normative economic question that be analyzed based on value judgements (i.e., given a social welfate function). "Why is wealth inequality problematic?" is not an economic question. Some people value equality, some people do not. Value jugdements are not questioned in economics.

[MCU] How did Tony find out Peter Parker's secret identity?

Geographic Profiling. Peter’s heroics are clustered nearby his place of residence which narrows down the list of potential suspects considerably. Even more so considering there are two clusters, his house and Midtown High. Then you exclude the ones that don’t match the physical dimensions of Spider-Man and you are left with a small number of potential suspects. Once you have that small list you check their social media to see if you can find a digital alibi for the person. Because of the number of Spider-Man incidents it’s fairly easy to show that each false suspect has been online during at least one of them and thus can’t be Spider-Man.

[Star Trek] To what extent would a Starfleet officer in the 2360s be familiar with the exploits of James T. Kirk and his crew from 100 years previously? Would their knowledge be comparable to that of a dedicated "Trekkie" in our world?

In the U.S. military history is reinforced during professional development. It helps provide positive and negative examples of behavior. So, assuming that Kirk had a significant impact on Star Fleet, or history.... yea, they would discuss him during academy.

Do race horses consciously compete to win? Do they feel / appear happy when they win and sad / disappointed when they lose?

I asked this question a while back on r/AskReddit because at the time I didn't know about r/askscience. There were lots of anecdotes claiming that horses indeed consciously complete to win races. l am yet to be convinced that horses are aware of the whole game plan i.e. they know they are there to win and if they fall short they are disappointed. What does r/askscience think?

Research in animal science indicates that horses (like many herd animals) compete to maintain their standing in what they perceive as their herd. So, in terms of racing horses (the bulk of the research has been done with thoroughbred racehorses), the goal is to "convince" the horse that being ahead of the pack is how it maintains its herd position. This is complicated, since, it seems, horses include significant humans as herd-mates, and utilize social cues we humans rarely notice, much less understand. The emotional connotations to the animals... well, researchers don't much agree on these for most animals. Ethologists over the last decade or so have discovered that many social animals perform more consistently under experimental conditions if they are treated as if they used emotional constructs similar those used by humans, even if differently motivated. tl;dr Yes they compete, but not to "win" as we know it, and they seem to be happy or sad about their success or lack thereof.

ELI5: What is herd immunity and how does it work?

Viruses and bacteria transmit from person to person. With a large population there will always be some people who cannot get vaccinated for a variety of reasons (such as being immunocompromised following radiation therapy, organ transplant, is allergic to the vaccine, too young for a vaccine, etc) Herd immunity happens when the majority of the population has been vaccinated or otherwise immune to contagious disease. Lots of vaccinated people means the disease is not constantly hopping around from person to person. When a person who is not vaccinated is surrounded by people who *are vaccinated*, this reduces their possible exposure to sick people. It does not stop a sick person from *directly* exposing a disease to a vulnerable person, but *if almost everyone is vaccinated* then it greatly reduces the numbers of sick people and carriers.

AskScience AMA Series: I'm Michael Abramoff, a physician/scientist, and Principal Investigator of the study that led the FDA to approve the first ever autonomous diagnostic AI, which makes a clinical decision without a human expert. AMA.

[Nature Digital Medicine published our study last week, and it is open access](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-018-0040-6). This publication had some delay after the [FDA approved the AI-system, called IDx-DR, on April 11 of this year](https://www.fda.gov/newsevents/newsroom/pressannouncements/ucm604357.htm). After the approval, many physicians, scientists, and patients had questions about the safety of the AI system, its design, the design of the clinical trial, the trial results, as well as what the results mean for people with diabetes, for the healthcare system, and the future of AI in healthcare. Now, we are finally able to discuss these questions, and I thought a reddit AMA is the most appropriate place to do so. While this is a true AMA, I want to focus on the paper and the study. Questions about cost, pricing, market strategy, investing, and the like I consider to not be about the science, and are also under the highest regulatory scrutiny, so those will have to wait until a later AMA. I am a retinal specialist - a physician who specialized in ophthalmology and then did a fellowship in vitreoretinal surgery - who treats patients with retinal diseases and teaches medical students, residents, and fellows. I am also a machine learning and image analysis expert, with a MS in Computer Science focused on Artificial Intelligence, and a PhD in image analysis - Jan Koenderink was one of my advisors. 1989-1990 I was postdoc in Tokyo, Japan, at the RIKEN neural networks research lab. I was one of the original contributors of ImageJ, a widely used open source image analysis app. I have published over 250 peer reviewed journal papers (h-index 53) on AI, image analysis, and retina, am past Editor of the journals IEEE TMI and IOVS, and editor of Nature Scientific Reports, and have 17 patents and 5 patent applications in this area. I am the Watzke Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Iowa, and I am proud to say that my former graduate students are successful in AI all over the world. [More info on me on my faculty page](https://medicine.uiowa.edu/eye/abramoff). I also am Founder and President of [IDx](https://www.eyediagnosis.net/), the company that sponsored the study we will be discussing and that markets the AI system, and thus have a conflict of interest. FDA and other regulatory agencies - depending on where you are located - regulate what I can and cannot say about the AI system performance, and I will indicate when that is the case. [More info on the AI system, called labelling, here](https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/ea14f7_410f793af1504f46a9bf76d20a3b4d02.pdf). I'll be in and out for a good part of the day, AMA!

Considering the need for human interaction (caregiver - patient) in medicine, what are your thoughts going forward? Restrict these AI to assist medical professionals in the diagnostic process (read: allow them more patient contact time - a major hurdle most medical tech development is focused on currently) or replace much of the function of a human in healthcare? If the latter, do you think that’s a viable goal, again considering the imperative for human contact in the healthcare sector? Medicine is still in dire need of functional technology assistance (particularly in diagnoses), but how far do you feel we can take it before there is significant diminishing returns/potential backlash? Say, 20 years down the road, the requirements for an M.D are reduced to fill the existing void, because some major part of their training has now been replaced by AI. So we get more medical professional, but they’re less trained, potentially less capable/more reliant on AI. Also congratulations to you and your team, this FDA approval is no small matter!

ELI5: What is camera exposure and why does it make picture look so good?

The exposure is the amount of light that hits the picture-making part of the camera. Good exposure is important because cameras are not as good at seeing really bright things and really dark things at the same time as people are. Really bright things go totally white and dark things go totally black, like when you walk out of a dark room and into the sun. To allow you to see, your eye responds by closing down its iris to let less light in. A camera performs in a similar way by closing down a metal iris. The hole the iris allows is called the aperture and its size is measured in "stops," which are a ratio of the size of the opening to the focal length (zoom-in-ed-ness) of the lens.

is race a social construct?

There are two common issues that come up in discussion on this. The first is that people think social constructs are simple fictions. They are not. Social constructs are complex ideas that are created by people. Money is a social construct, for example. The second is the idea that social constructs are unrelated to the physical world. Money has a physical reality, of course. Race often corresponds to certain physiological characteristics. What makes it a social construct is the way those characteristics are derived from ideas of nations and continents, and could instead be related to social class, geographical region rather than nation, or any number of foundations for dividing humanity. So, race is a social construct, but social constructs are real, and social constructs have physical aspects.

ELI5: I am 30+ years old and just got told that I have peanut allergies. I grew up eating peanut butter and several other peanut related foods. How can I suddenly acquire such an allergy?

A couple of weeks ago I had an allergic reaction while out at a local coffee shop. After getting to a medical facility and having it under control, I went to see my doctor to find out what happened. Blood work was done and it came up that I'm suddenly allergic to peanuts. I am still getting more blood work done because my wheat allergy was slightly high, so my doctor wants to see what my sensitivity to celiac is (not sure if this could be related or help explain things). I've been left completely in the dark by my doctor about this sudden allergy. I grew up eating peanut related foods on a regular basis. I would snack on a spoonful of peanut butter frequently. If I someone who didn't eat it often I wouldn't be so at a loss. How can this come on so suddenly?

An allergy is an accidental immune reaction. One of the major features of your immune system is your antibodies. Antibodies are like keys that float around looking for their locks, which are biotic features called antigens. An antigen is a unique tag that living cells produce. These antibodies are randomly generated in your lymph nodes. There are upwards of a billion possible antibodies in most people and before they are released into your body they are tested for self-similarity, meaning that if your own cells trigger the antibody it is disassembled so that your immune system doesn't attack your own cells. (In some people this doesn't work, and that's how you get an autoimmune disease.) In most cases, your body will also screen out foreign antigens that are known to be harmless (like peanut antigens). So, why do you have a peanut allergy all of a sudden? In your first 30 years, your body never happened upon an antibody that is triggered by a peanut antigen (remember antibodies are randomly assembled). Now, your body has made that antibody and apparently that antibody made it through the screening process. So, the antibody attaches to the antigen and basically posts a sign, saying 'immune system come find me and destroy me.' Meanwhile, it also sends a copy of itself back to your central immune system with a message that says 'I am a useful antibody. Keep making copies of me.' So now, unless you happen upon an immune disorder that interrupts the peanut-antigen-antibody making process, your body now things that peanuts are something it's supposed to attack. And voila! Allergies.

ELI5: From a single cell to a human - is every cell's behavior, task, etc all governed by DNA and more importantly, how does DNA interact with the cell to control it?

So the cool thing about biology is that we're all just "chemistry buckets". We're just a lot of very advanced chemistry, and chemistry dictates everything we are. Proteins are a family of molecule that are actually very diverse. They can make structures, like cell walls and fingernails. But again -- just chemicals. They're not "smart". A protein has a job to do, and it does it. Keratin, which is one of the proteins that make up hair and nails, is shaped so that it lines itself up into structures. Other proteins carry "messages" from one place to another. Really that just means that some protein is sent into the blood, where it travels the whole body -- cause again, just a sack of chemistry -- and eventually it'll find a place that it fits. And when it does "fit" into something, that something may react, maybe by producing other chemicals. Proteins also break down other materials (enzymes), can attack pathogens, and do lots more. DNA itself is the protein cookbook. It's also just a chemical; a huge one, but a chemical nonetheless. In labs, to inspect DNA, they actually grow more of it. You just take DNA, and throw it into a soup of other chemicals that replicate DNA (those same chemicals found in the body) and then you cook it, and boom, you have a lot more DNA. Either way, there's another chemical that interacts with DNA. It latches onto a bit of DNA, takes its shape, falls away and then another chemical comes in and builds a protein from that shape. It's almost like taking a cast and then a mold of something you want to sculp. The DNA is huge and "codes" lots of different proteins -- all your proteins, in fact -- but the RNA only needs to interact with a section at a time. And remember still, nothing "smart" is happening here. It's just several chemical reactions, one after another. But because DNA is the template for every protein your body uses, it defines your whole body. There's one protein that causes the gold flecks around the ring of your iris (in your eye) -- some people have it, some people don't. But at no point do these biological tools make "decisions"; the DNA doesn't "control" a cell in the sense that it's directing traffic. It's just a very complex system of different chemicals interacting with each other and producing different effects.

ELI5: Why are weeds so easy to grow, but a healthy lawn and plants take actual work?

My lawn is all sorts of dry after the PNW heat wave, but the weeds sprouted up like a forest.

Different plants like different amounts of rain or heat or sunlight or soil composition, and obviously they grow best when they have exactly what they want Weeds aren’t a special kind of plant, it’s just a generic name for a plant that grows where humans don’t want it grow. The plants that grow everywhere do so because the local environment is perfect for them As it turns out, what humans want is usually incompatible with nature. The plants we want (like lawn grass) are actually very incompatible with the natural environmental conditions. They struggle or die out frequently and need constant human intervention to survive conditions that are perfect for plants that we don’t want

I believe that a significant portion of military funding in the US should be used instead to fund education. CMV.

I guess I could probably write an ELI5 about military spending, because I know next to nothing about it, but I always hear about absurd dollar amounts being thrown into the military. For instance: http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison What I believe however, is that if we took a significant portion of that budget, say 30% of the 682 billion dollars, and used it to make public schools better and higher education more accessible, then we would see a dramatic increase in our countries economy and overall wellbeing. Idea being: smarter population=more efficient country. The only drawback is that it is somewhat of a long term investment; it will take a few years for the people who benefit from this funding to graduate and assimilate into society.

Military funding in the U.S. is sized to match the strategic security needs of the state, which were most recently updated in any meaningful sense by then Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld in 2001 (prior to the 9/11 event) in what's known as the "1-4-2-1" doctrine: defend the homeland; deter hostilities in up to four theaters; have the strength to win two simultaneous conflicts in these regions; and do so decisively. Some of the deterrence is wrapped up in our nuclear deterrent (the U.S. maintains one of the largest nuclear weapons arsenals in the world, with a strategic triad of delivery systems: subs, planes, and missiles); much of it is tied up in having by far the most powerful navy, including ten carrier groups, which allow us to project force to anywhere on the planet. We have large strategic bomber and ICBM forces that can hold at risk any target on the planet. While the military is in the process of downsizing/"right-sizing" to match the requirements of emerging threats (see all the recent hue and cry over the Administration's modest cuts to military spending), this is not a response to any significant change in strategic posture. If a significant change in spending is needed, then this must be coupled with a change in doctrine and this is not the sort of thing to be done lightly, as there are very serious political ramifications to any major military downgrade--no President wishes for his or her legacy to be as the Administration that lost the U.S.'s military superpower status. Moreover, if such cuts were to happen, there's identically zero chance that the money would be routed instead to our schools or other infrastructure. It's axiomatic in the U.S. with both major political parties that "our schools are failing" and "the problem isn't money." Convincing us to give up our superpower status (which benefits us in several indirect ways--e.g. the demand for dollars worldwide) in order to throw more federal money at schools is a non-starter. While it sounds nice in the abstract, there's simply no practical way to get there from here. Edit: typo fix

CMV:graphic designers aren't artists, just highly trained computer software users.

Was having a conversation with a friend of mine who is getting ready to graduate after one more semester. She is finishing up her internship, and dropped this on me. "I've come to a bit of a depressing conclusion that graphic design is not art; it's simply creating something that other people can't because they haven't learned the software." We both were in the same graphic design program at school, and recently starting a career in graphic design myself this is a kind of bleak, but almost correct view. I know what I do isn't art in a pure sense, but I also know what I am is more than a trained monkey who can use Creative Suite software. The words in my head just aren't forming into a solid way of persuading myself and my friend to believe we are more than just trained technicians. CMV! edit: Thanks everyone for the responses. It's a combination of many of the responses put together that helped to change my view, rather than one individual response. I feel a little stronger in the fact that my career choice takes more than simple technical skill (I knew it didn't in the first place but had no conviction behind it). _____ > *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*

By that analogy, are painters highly trained brush users, or are musicians just highly trained instrument users? Everyone can use a brush, an instrument or any software, but only those gifted can create something amazing that can be described as art.

ELI5: How do animals know to look humans in the eye? Why do they do it?

Even for animals the basic understanding of what eyes are is important for survival. How do you know if that predator is looking at you, or if the fellow animal of your species feels threatened? How does a predator know if it is being observed or which direction the prey is likely to flee? Even fish can recognize eyes which is why the fake eye spots on tails even exist! So yeah, animals know to look at the eyes of humans because that is what we see with. Some important things they can get from our eyes is our direction of sight, from which they can deduce where our attention is directed.

ELI5: Why does heat alter our perception and create a "wavy" effect.

For example, the area above a strong heater.

Heat changes the refractive index of air (due to expansion), and as currents and eddies of air pass through a heater – or over a desert – there's an uneven heating effect, causing slight but visible waves of differing refraction.

As we age, why does it become harder to see in dimly lit rooms?

Apologies if this has been answered already. My vision is good for my age, but it is much harder to read menus etc. in dimly lit rooms. I find myself tapping on my iPhone flashlight or holding a menu closer to a candle. Much like I saw my father and other adults do when I was a kid,

Your eye is like a camera. To achieve focus on any camera, you have 3 options. Option 1 is what a healthy eye normally does, which is to focus your lens to a distance of an object you wish to capture. But as you age, the lens in your eye loses elasticity and it's harder to change the distance to which it is focused. In fact, this function is the first thing to go for most people - the lens' ability to stretch and compress into a desired shape is progressively lost, which is why reading becomes harder. This is like switching to a camera with a fixed lens, and is a main reason why surgery can't fix the loss of ability to see up close. But if the lens becomes fixed to a narrower set of depths, you can still use options 2 and 3. Option 2 is to increase the distance between the camera and the object to the one that your lens is already focused at. You've seen people do this (or may have done it yourself) when you moved the thing you're reading further away. The last thing you can do is to increase the range of depths that your fixed lens is focused on. This is done by making a tighter aperture, which reduces light scatter*, thereby increasing the depth of field. Your eye can control this in two ways. You can squint to tighten your aperture, or you can force your pupils to reduce in size by shining more light onto an object. As you age, you can expect to be insinctively doing an increasing combination of all three modes of fixed-lens focusing. This is why those of us over the age of 40 buy reading glasses by the dozen - this is akin to carrying an extra fixed camera lens set to a closer focal distance. ___ *Not the most correct explanation for why the DOF is increased. It actually has more to do with ray angles, but it's close enough for the sake of this explanation.

CMV: Private Businesses Should be Allowed to Discriminate Against Anybody they Want to

Earlier today, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the *Masterpiece Cakeshop* in the landmark case *Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission*. I have read pieces of the ruling as well as the dissent, and I understand that this ruling's scope is very narrow and mostly applies to religious views and freedom of expression; it is not a blanket ruling that allows businesses to choose not to serve gays. However, I have been thinking about this topic a lot today, and I personally believe that private businesses should be allowed to discriminate against whomever they like. If a private business does not want to serve people of color, or Jewish people, or whomever, they shouldn't have to. The United States is based upon a free market capitalist system \(albeit with some restrictions, so it's not really true free market economy, but I digress\), and if a business wants to turn people away and lose money simply to uphold their personal views \(even if they are largely unpopular views\), then I think they should be allowed to do so. If the public really thinks that this is wrong, they will simply stop going to that business, and sooner or later it won't be financially sustainable and will go bankrupt. Think of it like this: let's say there is a small business who refuses to serve Jewish people. Once word of this got around to the general public, people would be upset and would boycott this business. Eventually, it would lose enough money and would have two options: a\) 'stick to your guns' and continue to forfeit money in order to uphold your personal beliefs, or b\) renounce your prior views and begin serving Jewish people again. The free market makes discrimination an unfavorable business model, and if people are really opposed to discrimination, they will punish the businesses that engage in it by not giving them money. I understand that this viewpoint is not particularly popular, and I am very interested in finding out why. Please try to change my view!

This view is predicated on the idea that the exclusion of certain social classes would cause an establishment to lose money, but history has shown us that quite the opposite can happen and exclusion of social classes can be quite profitable. Jim Crow is the most obvious example. White customers desired the exclusivity, so businesses were more than happy to serve those interests. Do you think there aren't certain areas of the country where discrimination against certain groups of people (LGBTQ+ individuals, Muslims, Atheists) could be a draw for certain demographics? And what do you think happens when people see public discrimination rewarded? Well other establishments start doing it too, and marginalization of certain classes becomes a norm, which encourages further discriminatory behavior.

ELI5: How come black people have predominately curly hair?

And how come some other races don't? I've never seen an Asian with curly hair for example.

For the first humans living in Africa, the curly hair offered distinct evolutionary advantages such as: - protecting the head from UV radiation (the head being the most important part of the body and therefore needing protection the most), - not becoming a soggy clump covering your eyes when wet, and - allowing increased airflow around the head For those who migrated to other parts of the world, these benefits didn't necessarily apply.

Eli5: Why do knees have kneecaps, but elbows dont have elbowcaps?

The kneecap enhances the leverage the quadriceps muscle has on the lower leg by acting as a simple lever on which the quadriceps tendon rides. This allows the quadriceps muscle to perform the powerful movements the leg requires. Simply put, the elbow doesn't have the same requirements for massive muscular power to be exerted across the joint. The triceps has enough leverage the way it's configured to meet the needs of our upper limbs without another structure to enhance it.

Thoughts/questions about quitting PhD

My apologies in advance for somewhat of a rambling post - I'm a 31/m, have a wife and 2-year old with plans for a second child currently on hold because of financial constraints. I'm currently in the 5th year of a upper mid-tier history PhD program and am juggling quitting. I've lost most all passion and drive for academic research and writing, and the thought of having to finish writing my PhD looms over me and infects every part of my life. It makes me sad, because I have an exciting topic in contemporary European history and have essentially gathered enough sources and interviews (with some unique finds) to complete writing. It's modern and "sexy" enough that I would very likely be able to find a publisher for the manuscript afterwards. But I am miserable. Once upon a time I was a very social person, always positive and optimistic, likeable and outgoing, but the isolation of writing has turned me into a cranky recluse with zero interest in keeping up with friends and family. I used to spend free time with hobbies like music writing, biking, auto restoration, but now I spend my free time finding ways to shut my brain off, which usually means having a few drinks and sitting in front of the tv pretending to watch something while my mind wanders. I view hanging out with friends and family now first and foremost as a good excuse not to be working, instead of genuinely enjoying their company. I still have that intellectual curiosity and genuine interest in knowledge that started me on this track, but I can't bring myself to pick up any new interesting book, because I instantly feel guilty for investing mental energy into something that is not my dissertation. Doing a PhD seems to have brought out the worst in my personality in terms of not handling the stress of a large, looming project and letting it overtake my life, poor time management, constant confusion and disorganization and inability to ever be fully "present" when spending time with others etc. I was never one to shirk from work before and always considered myself to be a hard worker and someone happy to put in the extra time and effort to ensure something was done right the first time. I used to be sharp, on the ball and reliable, now I come across as not very bright, disorganized and overall not someone you would want working for you in any job capacity. I confidently feel that deciding to do a PhD was the single worst decision of my life. I no longer like who I am, and I feel like the strengths I used to have (confidence, social skills, empathy, ability to read people extremely well) have been eroded to the point where I wouldn't even know where to start looking for an alternative job, especially with half a PhD and zero work experience outside academia or teaching for the past 8 years. At this point, I am only holding on with the hopes of landing a teaching gig at a lib arts college or something similar, as teaching is the only aspect of my professional life right now I still feel rewarded by. Teaching is really something I get passionate about, but I realized early on I didn't want to teach in high school for a variety of reasons. I was very close to quitting my PhD during and right after comps, but I landed a year-long research fellowship and took that as a sign I should stick with it. Now I am still hanging on with the hopes that my persistence will be rewarded with a college teaching gig. Or that my PhD will perhaps help me in landing a decent government job (the US gov. recognizes grad education as a substitute for experience for many positions). I would jump all over virtually any alternative job opportunity that presented itself to me right now, but of course nothing is going to just fall in my lap if I'm not actively making it happen. I guess I'd like to know how common it is to feel this defeated during a PhD. How bad was it for those who made it through? Would it be dumb to make it this far and stop, or dumb to waste another day of my life being this unhappy? When I signed up for grad school I made the decision to forgo immediate fun (I was teaching abroad and traveling a lot) in order to secure a career and future, and that has been my motivation throughout this, especially the "light" at the end of the tunnel of teaching 15-20 hours a week and having significant schedule flexibility to be a better family man. But are the prospects of a career in the field so slim that I would be crazy to continue doing this to myself for the off chance I land a fleeting academic job? I'd really appreciate any advice, suggestions or observations. I've been running around in circles between quitting and sticking it out for months now and I'm reaching my wit's end. edit* In case any one was wondering, I've brought it up with my wife before, though not recently, and she's always been supportive. I'm 100% sure she would back me up in whatever I decide.

1. If you put your nose to the grindstone, how quickly do you think you could finish your degree? 2. If you dropped out tomorrow, what would you be doing instead? 3. If you dropped out 6 months from now, what do you think you could be doing and how likely is it that would occur?

[Chemistry] When you burn a pan, boiling water with vinegar in it makes it a lot easier to clean up. Why does that happen?

Vinegar is an acetic acid solution. Acetic acid is a weak acid, and vinegar is usually pretty dilute, but even considering that it has a pH of about 2.5, which is vastly more acidic than water. The heat coupled with the acidity breaks down whatever you got stuck to your pan faster than just water and heat would.

[Numenera] Why are humans completely unchanged from their 21st-century forms?

Aside from the occasional abhuman or mutant, humans are exactly the same a billion years in the future from now in both appearance and manner of thinking. Why? That's a long time to go without changing.

Speciation. There are actually several species of "human" in a billion years. The one you are more familiar with is simply the only one called human. Also, as an aside, evolution doesn't always actually make dramatic differences over time. It only puts a slight pressure toward those that survive and reproduce more effectively. If there is little to no such pressure, than a species changes very little. Think alligators. Most humans in a billion years though are more attractive, stronger, and smarter than the equivalent human in 21st century forms. But being attractive, strong, or smart does not necessarily negate any of the philosophies we use in the 21st century. They're still all valid ways of thinking.

If it’s pretty universally accepted that humans are morally worth more than animals because of our rationality...

then how do we get around the idea that more intelligent people are worth more than less intelligent people? What is the relevant difference that makes it ok to kill a cow but not okay to kill a severely handicapped human that has intelligence around the level of a cow? I realize this question makes me sound like a psycho. I’m not one, I just want to know what people educated in ethics think. I personally suspect that the “but animals aren’t rational” is total bullshit and in a few hundred years, we will be looked back on like Nazis for killing other sentient creature for food/sport.

Rationality is supposed to be a "range property," such that if you have any of it (or, rather, enough of it, and enough is not much) then the full moral effects of having that property apply to you. It's like if a club has a rule that they only let in people wearing a blue jacket. It's not like you can get let into the club twice by wearing two blue jackets or by wearing a blue jacket plus blue pants. As long as you have a blue jacket you're in, and you're just as in as anyone else with a blue jacket.

When applying to jobs, should I apply to multiple software positions at the same company at the same location, or would I essentially be spamming HR?

Trying to figure out what the best method of pursuing a job is right now. Wasn't sure if it would give me any leg up as long as they see that I applied to the company, and I thought someone here might have some guidance for me.

Don't spam them, but if there are multiple positions at a company you feel you are qualified for then send a resume for each. If you're really feeling motivated add a tailored sentence or 2 in a cover letter that explains why you're good for THAT position. But you don't want to be annoying. Whoever is reviewing resumes will likely pick up on that. And if you're spamming the reviewer will say to themselves "man, this person is annoying" and will ignore anything with your name on it. Reviewers are people, often told by their boss to review hundreds of resumes. They're looking for the right experience with respectable presentation and a polite interaction to determine if they want that person to be around in their organization every day for years. Be cool, be nice, be motivated.

CMV: The privilege plus power theory/definition of racism and sexism is a disguised and dangerous political argument

It has become popular in recent years to state that racial minorities cannot be racist, and women cannot be sexist, because racism and sexism require not only bias or bigotry, but also the ability to exercise social power that women and racial minorities do not enjoy. As I see it, there are multiple problems with this assertion. First, it conflicts with common usage. Sexism is customarily defined as prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex. Similarly, prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior, whether biologically or culturally or some combination thereof, is the customary definition of racism. This usage is also commonly reflected in the law on racial discrimination, including international law. According to the 1965 UN International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life. No distinction is drawn on the basis of one's alleged social power. Second, the definition by necessity excludes any particular individual who cannot effectively wield that power, even if they harbor intense racial animus. In order to justify the designation of a socially powerless member of the Aryan Brotherhood as a racist, a convoluted theory of power must be agreed upon to sustain the definition. But power is, at base, the capacity to exert force on or over something or someone. In this formulation, an imprisoned member of the Aryan Brotherhood with no capacity to exert power over anyone else is not a racist, despite his or her adherence to an explicitly racist ideology that proclaims belief in the superiority of whites. Third, the definition of racism would necessarily vary by society. In societies where blacks wielded significant political power, as in Zimbabwe, anti-white racism would exist. But instead of discussing racism in those societies, the fallback position of privilege plus power advocates is instead colonialism and the legacy of white supremacy. It is impossible to argue, however, that whites in Zimbabwe exercise any real power. And even if we do not use the historically complicated example of formerly white supremacist countries like Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, we still run into conceptual difficulties when addressing, for example, the Hutu/Tutsi divisions in Rwanda and its environs, where the balance of social and political power shifts and is unclear. Remarkably, the solution advocated by some social justice advocates is simply to blame, again, colonialist legacy, despite the pre-colonial existence of divisions. How does one address the apparent power divisions in other societies using this formulation? Are anti-Sunni practices the functional equivalent of racism in Syria, but not in Iraq given the legacy of Sunni dominance over a Shiite majority? How does one analyze the forced expulsion of Indians in Uganda? In these cases, we find critical race theorists tend to fit the facts for their narrative, as opposed to exploring the diverse set of causes for structural inequality and intolerance in different locations. The "privilege plus power" definition is subject to considerable confusion, and even opportunistic abuse. Claims of racial discrimination by ethnic majorities are treated with skepticism, even if the power dynamic is reversed and there is no particular reason to discount the allegation of discrimination. The "privilege plus power" definition can even be wielded to suggest that rejecting the *definition* is an exercise of racist power, allowing a political opponent to charge "privilege plus power" skeptics of racism, a charge that often relies on the social stigma that attaches to intentional, overt belief in white supremacy. Finally, the "privilege plus power" definition, in practice, encourages individuals to cling to their own underprivileged status or point to historically underprivileged status. Someone who is white and Jewish or gay, for example, may point to the social discrimination and powerlessness that they have experienced as a result of that status. Similarly, white ethnics may point to their own disfavored status following their ancestor's arrival to this country, many of them within living memory. Thus one's status becomes a vehicle for disclaiming privilege or seeking favored status as part of a group that suffered or suffers discrimination. It also complicates the supposedly reliable definition of "whiteness" that is assumed, although left unstated, in the "privilege plus power" formulation, and encourages hyper-ethnic consciousness. The academics and activists who formulated the "privilege plus power" theory of various "isms" may have the best of intentions, but this theory/definition of racism, sexism and other forms of bigotry is a political argument that conceals as much as it reveals. If you disagree, change my view. _____ > *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! 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The definition that you're speaking of comes from a mixing of academic words with their common English counterparts. In this case, people are conflating the common English "racism" with the sociological "institutional racism". In the context of sociological racism, it makes perfect sense. Institutional racism has to do with disparities in housing, legal ramifications, medical care, etc, etc. The privilege plus power dynamic makes sense in that context because of course the dominant demographic has to wield considerable power to be able to deprive other demographics of housing, for instance. The problem comes about when people try to semi-kind of merge the two definitions. If we just swapped the common individual racism with institutional racism, then calling someone a slur is no longer an act of racism since it isn't institutional. So some people have taken parts of institutional racism, and parts of common racism, and melded them together into new-wave racism. That's where the "you can't be racist without privilege plus power" comes from, despite the fact that it's wholly incorrect.

[Skyrim] Why do farmers have no issue with people stealing their crops?

They assume you are a noble, and as peasants they are required to give a large percentage of their crop to their Lord's and it is above their station to question when and how the nobility collects their due

ELI5: If it's possible for animals to be born with instincts and behaviors (like bees knowing direction using the sun) could there be some advanced civilization somewhere that is born knowing calculus (for example).

I was wondering this since I've been thinking about all the animals out there that sort of just "know" how to survive already, coupled with the fact that there are planets out in the universe that have existed many times longer than earth, and likely have civilizations that have evolved on them as well. On another note, do you think the technology to create a baby with all this information already in it's brain will come about sooner than a similar evolution would?

Sure, it is possible, but it would likely be quite a burden on the poor creatures. The great advantage that humans have had over other organisms on Earth is our tremendous adaptability through our ability to learn brand new ideas which our genetics don't provide. If this generation calculus is useful, but next generation flying airplanes is useful, we don't want to have big chunks of our brain dedicated to calculus from birth. What seems to be more useful to us are structures which make learning different things easier, but not too pre-programmed in something specific. For example, we have a tremendous in-built capacity for language, but nobody knows a specific language, so if a person born to German parents grows up in Japan, that child will be able to learn the contextually appropriate language. Similarly, we have in-built capacity for understanding numbers, but not to nearly the same degree. Presumably we could increase this capacity through bio-engineering, but we wouldn't be stuck with one particular way of thinking about math. For evolution to result in an organism with this much specific information would require an environment which selects rather heavily for it and an organism which has a reasonable capacity to move into the niche. Our more generalized approach to learning seems much more likely to occur as these capacities are well suited to a greater variety of circumstances. For an organism to not develop technology capable of self-engineering, but be in the genetic ballpark of behavior such as differentiation seems quite unlikely.

ELI5: What is a Three Body Problem?

There are some problems in physics where you can come up with an exact solution or an equation that gives you a whole set of solutions. For example, if you are driving at a constant speed then the distance you have traveled after a given time is distance = speed \* time. Similarly, if you drop a ball from a given height and can ignore air resistance then the position of the ball at a given time is height = initial height - 1/2 \* g \* time^(2) (where g is the acceleration due to gravity) Other problems have no such solution available. For example, if we weren't allowed to ignore air resistance on the falling ball then there's no nice equation that tells us where the ball is at every instant. You can still calculate it, but you have use an iterative approach--if you know where the ball is at time T then you can compute where it'll be a short while later and be pretty accurate. By using sufficiently short time steps you can get as accurate of an answer as you'd like, but there's no simple formula. In orbital mechanics the "two body problem" is where you have just two things in a hypothetical universe, one orbiting the other (or really both orbiting their mutual center of mass, but often we choose one object to be so massive that it barely moves; often this is a planet and moon, a star and planet, a planet and satellite, etc). The two body problem does have a number of nice equations to describe where you'll find each of the objects at any given time, starting from some given starting conditions. An astronomer by the name of Johannes Kepler worked that out from observations, then later Newton came along and formulated how gravity works well enough to prove Kepler's work mathematically. Similar to how you can ignore air resistance on a ball and wind up with an accurate enough result most of the time, in orbital mechanics you can ignore all other celestial bodies except the one you're looking at and the biggest thing it's orbiting and usually get a pretty good solution. Sometimes, however, you do have to consider all of the forces on an object. For that we turn to the three body problem. The three body problem is similar to the two body problem, but instead of a hypothetical universe with just 2 objects we now have 3 (and could continue on to 4, 5, etc, all the way up to the real universe with an enormous number of objects). Unlike the 2 body problem there is not a nice equation that will tell you where to find any given object at any given time, but similar to our ball with air resistance we can take an iterative approach, simulating paths with shorter and shorter time steps to get more and more accurate results. Note that the phrase "three body problem" is sometimes lifted from its physics application to describe social situations where the addition of a third person makes the social situation similarly difficult to solve, whether that's a couple plus a single friend who gets in the way of couples activities or a trio of people where one has feelings for both of the other two.

Are there crazy caves with no entrance to the surface pocketed all throughout the earth or is the earth pretty solid except for cave systems near the top?

Cave systems can be present deep underground in sedimentary rocks under the right conditions. One way is to have a layer of limestone at the surface long enough to form a karst (cave) topography, then subsequently subside and be buried by thousands of feet of sediment. The caves will still exist, but have no connection to the surface. One place this occurs is some parts of Texas, where those deep caves can be a significant drilling hazard in oil and gas exploration.

ELI5: What about GPU Architecture makes them superior for training neural networks over CPUs?

In ML/AI, GPUs are used to train neural networks of various sizes. They are vastly superior to training on CPUs. Why is this?

Imagine you have 1 million math assignments to do, they are very simple assignments, but there are a lot that need to be done, they are not dependent on each other so they can be done on any order. You have two options, distribute them to 10 thousand people to do it in parallel or give them to 10 math experts. The experts are very fast, but hey, there are only 10 of them, the 10 thousand are more suitable for the task because they have the "brute force" for this. GPUs have thousands of cores, CPUs have tens.

What’s job security like for biology phds in government? (Eg working for CDC or NIH)

And when I refer to jobs I’m really talking about staff scientist jobs.

Job security in federal scientific GS jobs is very good. Typically they cannot fire you without cause and you have to be given opportunities to complete corrective action before then if the "cause" is just that you're not great at your job. Promotion pathways are also clearly laid out, though that doesn't mean they're guaranteed. It is also easier to get another GS job once you're already a fed, so if you're at NIH and decide you want to move to Atlanta, your chances of getting a CDC job are much higher than they would be if you were applying as a member of the public. When/if there are budget cuts to your agency, they do everything they can to avoid laying off good people. So they'll do hiring freezes, early retirements, furloughs, cutting consultants, and pursuing for-cause firing of underperforming staff before they lay someone off. And if you are going to be or have been laid off (which is rare!), you're basically given top preference for any other federal job that you're qualified for for some period of time.

CMV: The current US bailouts for all the large companies is unfair to both the US taxpayers, small businesses, and every company that responsibly managed their money in recent years

Recently, the US government has given out trillions in bailouts to the airline, retail, hospitality, etc industries. However, as a tax payer, I'm outraged that these large corporations are getting these handouts from the government and getting rewarded for their greedy behavior. The bank bailouts of 08 made me sick and I can't believe we're doing this again. Millions of Americans lost their jobs and their homes due to the bank's irresponsible and illegal behavior, and yet all these bankers made out with millions. Take the airline industry for example. 96% of their Free Cash Flow was spent on stock buybacks this past decade. These C-suite executives and investors made millions off this type of behavior despite not creating any type of value for both the company and for their employees. If your company can't last a few months of stagnant revenue, you shouldn't be spending all that money on buybacks and dividends. Especially when a large reason these companies found so much excess money in the last couple years was an egregious gifted tax cut from the government. Sure no one could have foreseen the current environment, but nearly every economist was predicting a recession within the next few years. They should have prepared for some type of downturn. Furthermore, this punishes the companies that actually acted responsibly with their capital. In normal circumstances, this would be their opportunity to gain market share and even buy up some of the failing companies. Instead, they are robbed of this opportunity. The way our market works is that feedback is all seen through the lens of risk and reward. When a company decides to spend almost all of their profits on buybacks, they are taking the risk that a black swan event in the future can cause bankruptcy. Now we are removing the incentive for prudent decision making for companies. What's to stop companies of only acting recklessly since they know the government will always bail them out? Lastly, lots of small businesses are going bankrupt everyday. Where are their bailouts? Why should large companies with every advantage in the world be given this lifeline for acting so irresponsibly, when normal everyday people struggling to get by are not allotted this same opportunity. Before anyone says it, I understand bailouts are not free money. They're a loan by the government. But the interest rates are typically much lower than they would command in the free market. The government should either charge a high interest rate to compensate for that risk, or inject money into these companies through equity investments that could be put in a blind trust. At least in this scenario, the bailout is seen through the lens of a prudent investment. It's also pricing in the risks of investing in these companies since we never know what will happen to them in the future. If they don't want it, they can find someone else to give them money or go bankrupt. It's not like these companies will just disappear, there will be a buyer somewhere out there. No one is ENTITLED to a low interest loan from the government, especially these mega corporations who barely pay above minimum wage for their lowest employees while constantly upping the C-suite's compensation. By handing out bailouts that actually reflect the risk for these companies, we can actually punish the C-Suite and investors who squeezed every bit of profit out of the company during good times since these deals will negatively affect the stock price. The bailouts in its current form reward the CEOs and investors who already cashed out in the past couple of years pushing for buybacks and increased dividends.

Bailouts aren’t about “fairness,” they’re measures taken to minimize the damage of a steep economic downturn. Should hundreds or thousands of employees really suffer because executives made some bad decisions? Certainly THEY should be held accountable but all the people on the front lines? Not to mention the countless small businesses directly depending on their economic relationship to said large businesses?

CMV:Doctors are totally justified to request exams based on patient profile

It got me thinking about it after I read the testimony of this black woman from South Africa. She moved to another country and went to the doctor. Although the woman didn't show any related symptoms, the doctor requested her do an HIV test "because she is from Africa". The patient sees this as racism. I did some research and found that in South Africa 20% of the adult population has HIV. And a large share of them does not even know they are HIV positive. Medical authorities from all over the world recommend practitioners to HIV test patients that have some non-negligible risk of having HIV, however small that risk is. That includes victims of rape, people who have unprotected casual sex, sex workers, gay men, among other groups considered at risk. Even among these groups, rates of undetected HIV are below what is seen in South Africa. Just to be clear, I believe it is the doctor's duty to explain in a clear and respectful way why they are requesting an HIV exam, to make it as safe and confortable an experience as possible to the patient. But I got banned from a subreddit for pointing out that requesting an HIV test from a patient from south africa is not necessarily racist. It is good practice, with few exceptions. I believe what made this woman feel uncomfortable about the HIV test is her own prejudice against HIV patients and ignorance of the statistics. HIV testing is quick, simple, and nothing to be offended by. So my point is: the doctor must be respectful and offer information, but patients should be submitted to simple exams if they are part of certain demographics according to statistical data, and they are wrong to claim that is racism/discrimination/etc

The doctor should offer their strategy and reasons but it's up to the patient to decide whether they want to go through with it. You are correct it doesn't make the doctor racist because they are basing it off of statistics, but that still doesn't mean the patient should submit to the exam. The patient always have autonomy and control over what's being done on their body (unless they're not competent). In your example the patient can still refuse the exam in being suspicious that the doctor is racist.

How do physical forces, such as gravity, of two objects solve their effects on each other simultaneously?

Say we have two objects in space orbiting each other and we want to understand how each object affects the other object. We can calculate the forces at a point in time by freezing the system and using those values in whatever equation we are using. This is how a computer simulation works, with each iteration the variables are consecutively calculated based on the current system state. In reality wouldn't the forces be instantly applied to the other object?

1) the physical world is not a system of equations nor is it to be though of as a computer numerically solving those equations. The equations are a *model* to describe and predict phenomena in the physical world. 2) our current established fundamental theories (which are the standard model and general relativity mostly) are local theories, which means things interact only with things that are at the same point or in the immediate vicinity. Therefore, long-range interactions are actually mediated by fields through local interactions. Translation: planet A interacts with the gravitational field at the point where it stands. That bit of field then affects the bit of field slightly outwards, and so on until you have reached a certain distance from A. The planet thus carries around a structure or feature in the gravitational field, which we call the potential or gravitational well, that extends way out into space. This well has always existed along with the mass of the planet, and each bit of it is "supported" by the slightly inner bits until you reach the planet itself - every bit only knows about nearby bits. So when you place planet B at a distance, B is affected by the field *there*, and receives a force from the field. Effectively you see a interaction at a distance, but fundamentally all interactions are really local.

Is glass cracking consistent? Will the same crack occur under exactly the same conditions?

Thought it would be cool to create crack patterns for aesthetical reasons in controlled areas, is this even possible?

The irregilarities in the glass. (Same with steel) Ive worked in plants that recycled and melted/poured both. No two pieces are identical, never have been, probably never will be. Theres just far too many factors that affect that and material is cheap enough, theres virtually no steps taken to even attempt. Theres production procedures and quality control specs, thats about it. If the thickness, density, clarity and wthe fall within specs, its done. If your example, say drop a marble from 1 meter onto the glass. It would have a similar shape, maybe size... but even IF 2 appeared to be almost identical, id expect, over time as the glass heated/cooled/stressed, every one would behave differently

[Bayverse Transformers] What are the cognitive abilities of a transformer?

They're introduced and titled a "super advanced race of alien robots", however it seems like their most significant developments are out of their control (their robot 'biology') or something any sentient race could develop in time (space ships, physics-warping tech, laser guns, etc). How capable mentally is an individual transformer? Are they a super-computer, or are they just a 'person' with a robot body? We usually see them interacting just like they're normal human people. We almost never see them using high-tech military strategies like radio or binoculars or grouping up. Heck, most of the time a single injury reduces them to a kicked dog - flailing in pain, without regard to the fact they were just injured and should probably react somehow.

They seem roughly equivalent to a human, with all of the benefits and drawbacks that entails. Some of them are smart and noble, like Prime, some of them are greedy and evil, like Megatron, and some of them exist to make dick jokes. I don't think it's canon in the Bayverse, but in the TV show and comics, Mechanus created the Transformers to be *life*, not to be super tailored to a specific task, so it makes sense that they have all of the flaws and weaknesses of a human.

ELI5:Why, if baby formula is basically just fortified powdered milk, does it "go bad" after 1 hour at room temperature or 24 hours in the fridge when reconstituted powdered milk lasts 5 days in the fridge?

Is this all about safety or just a ploy to get parents to buy more formula?

It's a combination of a number of factors. First, babies have significantly weaker immune systems than grown adults, so a comparatively smaller amount of bacteria can cause them to get sick. Second, there's no way to know what environment the formula is going to be used in (in particular, how warm), and bacteria grows faster in warmer environments. And third, babies getting sick is extremely bad news for anyone selling formula, so they tend to be very cautious in what they say is safe. The amount of extra formula they sell because of this is probably pretty small, especially compared to the risk to them if they get it wrong and their name gets attached to babies being picked up by ambulances.

A communist sent me a link showing that communist nations experienced comparable or superior GDP per capita growth than non-communist nations. What caused this growth?

[Here](https://np.reddit.com/r/EnoughCommieSpam/comments/nh3y0r/what_kind_of_logic_is_this/gyy51kt?context=100) is the comment with the link. It showed that between 1950 to 1980, GDP per capita in Russia, Romania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Azerbaijan grew at a comparable rate as Finland and Ireland - and much faster than Indonesia. Is it really communism that caused such a meteoric rise in GDP per capita in Russia, Romania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Azerbaijan? Or was it something else?

In the centrally planned economies, the state forced workers from farms to cities, forced women into the labor force, forced workers to work in longer hours, restricted consumption and raised savings to boost capital accumulation. Increased use of capital and labor resulted in rapid industrialization. However, there was little or no productivity growth. Since input growth is inherently limited (hours of work, labor force participation or savings rate could not be raised indefinitely), the rapid GDP growth was not sustainable. Without central planning that mobilizes resources deliberately, the market economies grew at a more moderate pace. However, since their productivity growth was stronger, their growth sustained longer.

ELI5 - Why does physics break down at extremely high energies

I've often heard that trying to model or simulate the first few milliseconds of the universe is near impossible as our understanding of physics break down. Why does physics all of a sudden stop working at such high temperatures?

Milliseconds after the big bang everything is well understood - even microseconds afterwards it is fine. Before that it gets more challenging. There are three issues, sorted by increasing energy where they become relevant: * We run out of ways to test it experimentally. We can study the energies we can reach in particle accelerators, and studying cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere gives some insight a little bit above that, but the very early universe had conditions we cannot reproduce. * As the energy gets higher, gravity (which acts based on energy) gets stronger. At some point the gravitational interaction between individual particles becomes relevant, and there you have to use gravity and quantum mechanics at the same time. Currently we don't know how this works. Our current physics simply cannot make predictions for this. * Even if there wouldn't be gravity, our laws of physics are limited: While not as fast as gravity, the strength of the electromagnetic interaction increases with increasing energy as well. At some point our current theories predict that it becomes "infinitely strong". That doesn't make sense, of course - and it means our theories are not valid up to this point.

(WH40k) Why aren't exceptionally tough guardsmen made astartes?

I read about guardsmen like stone tooth harker and can't help but think they'd be unstoppable as astartes. It can't be that they're too old as hive city gang members are regularly made astartes. http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/%27Stonetooth%27_Harker

While there are many reasons, such as there being very strict limits on the number of space marines on duty, there are several major reasons. Most (If not all) chapters generally recruit the strongest young men from death worlds specifically chosen by the chapter, guaranteeing strength and power. The second reason is that the process of being a Space Marine is very long, and very dangerous. It is a regularity to not survive the growth of extra organs or hellish training, as well as occasionally the years of mental therapy can destroy the mind. Third, and potentially most important, is the fact that the guard would likely not allow the applicant to leave duty. Every man is important within the guard, and it would be highly foolish to simply give away the best guardsmen to an organization that has its own separate agenda and duties. So overall, while turning them into an even more unstoppable death machine is a highly tempting prospect, the high risk of death means that the guardsmen is doing more good for the Emperor where he is, even if you could get the imperial guard to give up applicants. Also there's something to be said about the strict separation of the military branches as well. If you start allowing strong ties to form between the imperial guard and various space marine chapters, it compromises the entire command structure of the Imperium.

AskScience AMA Series: We are the UCLA iGEM team, a group of undergraduate researchers participating in the world's largest synthetic biology competition. Inspired by biological design and motivated by human needs, we are seeking to genetically engineer novel synthetic silks. AUA!

**EDIT#2: AND THAT'S A WRAP! Thank you to everyone for asking great questions regarding our project, synthetic biology, and iGEM in general! We loved hearing from all of you. To keep up with news from the [UCLA iGEM](http://igematucla.com) team, be sure to like our [Facebook page](http://facebook.com/UCLAiGEM) and follow us on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/UCLAiGEM). Have a wonderful night everyone, and may your dreams be as "smooth as silk"!** **EDIT #1:** Keep the questions coming everyone! We are answering questions live at the [Minisymposium on Frontier Problems and Technologies in Bioenergy and Biodesign](http://www.doe-mbi.ucla.edu/frontier-problems-and-technologies-in-bioenergy-and-biodesign/), at the [UCLA MBI-DOE Institute](http://www.doe-mbi.ucla.edu). Here's some [proof](http://imgur.com/UToCBrN) -- we're presenting a poster of our preliminary results! Hi Reddit! We are the UCLA iGEM Team, a group of current and former undergraduate students applying recent advances in DNA synthesis and gene assembly to engineer and produce novel synthetic silks in bacteria. Our team participates in the annual International Genetically Engineered Machines ([iGEM](http://igem.org)) competition, the world’s largest synthetic biology competition. Our team is tasked with generating new biological DNA “parts” which, coupled with DNA sequences found in the [Registry of Standard Biological Parts](http://parts.igem.org), aims to advance the field of biological engineering. Silks, fibers created by a large range of organisms (including spiders, silkworms, and honeybees), have the potential to revolutionize the biomedical and defense fields. With their high tensile strength, malleability, and ability to be produced in tissue and bacterial cultures, silks have a wide array of applications, from tissue engineering, novel materials fabrication, and even in designing new products for high fashion and art. We are focused on utilizing recent advances in DNA synthesis and assembly to produce novel silks engineered in *Escherichia coli*, a common laboratory strain of bacteria. Our silks are being characterized with diverse strengths and functions, including the ability to be programmed for various strengths, elasticity, and fluorescence! Additionally, our team is structured as a completely undergraduate run research laboratory, where we design, implement, and present our own novel research projects. We believe that this method of developing research experience in young scientists is absolutely critical in preparing them for graduate school, industry, and beyond. Joining us are members of the UCLA iGEM team (/u/UCLA_iGEM) and our main advisor [Sri Kosuri](http://kosurilab.org) (/u/skosuri), Assistant Professor in the [Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry](http://chem.ucla.edu) at [UCLA](http://ucla.edu). For details about our previous projects, feel free to look through our [homepage](http://igematucla.com) and project wikis ([2014](http://2014.igem.org/Team:UCLA), [2015](http://2015.igem.org/Team:UCLA), and [2013](http://2013.igem.org/Team:UCLA)). Check out our [recent press release](http://www.chemistry.ucla.edu/news/ucla-igem-team-works-create-engineered-silk-bacteria) from the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, an [art gallery](http://artsci.ucla.edu/sites/artsci.ucla.edu/files/SilkUCLAArtSciGalleryOct2nd.pdf) hosted in collaboration with the [UCLA Art|Sci Center](http://dailybruin.com/2014/10/02/exhibition-weaves-art-science-together-with-silk/) and our latest [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmfN30Ji5dw) highlighting the team! Like us on [Facebook](http://facebook.com/UCLAiGEM), and follow us on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/UCLAiGEM). Join us in discussing the rapidly growing field of synthetic biology and undergraduate science education. Ask Us Anything!

How much of a silk's properties are the product of physical manipulation by spinnerets, and how much is purely chemical? In other words is there a mechanical challenge here as well as a biochemical one?

Is Piketty's 'Capital in the 21st century' comprehensible to non-economists ?

I'm an engineering student and I don't know much about economics. I was thinking about reading Piketty's book. How hard would it be for me ?

Generally, yes it is very accessible. In the introduction he specifically states that he wrote it in such way that it would be readable for people without a background in economics. Just make sure that you read the first two chapters on the economic history of the world, as it is essential to understand his main argument.

I want to give a demonstration speech on philosophy for my class but unsure of topic. Here's one I thought of?

Basically for class (not philosophy) we need to give a "demonstration speech" about 10-20 minutes long, showing how to do something. For all the speeches I have done so far, I have done it on a philosophical topic and I don't want to break from it but philosophy is something that's hard to demonstrate. What I thought of is, to demonstrate very basics of syllogism, illustrating various types of it emphasizing "how to think logically" then after the explanation, I will probably try to debunk a controversial topic (not sure yet) using said techniques. ​ I feel like people will do something that's very physical like how to make a \_\_\_ or how to do \_\_\_\_\_ so I think my topic might be too nonphysical? ​ What I want to ask is though, is there better topics to demonstrate in philosophy rather than what I initially thought of? Can anyone suggest anything else? I only took few college courses so I am not very knowledgeable in philosophy but I really like learning it.

Here's what i do when i engage with someone and want them to become interested in philosophy, i pick a proposition that some philosopher holds and that seems ridiculous at first glace, then i offer them the reasons and show them the argument for why some philosophers have reached that conclusion, making the claim more plausible to them, when it first sounded ridiculous, will definitely peak their interest and will show them how philosophers reach their conclusions. For an example of a position that might seem ridiculous at first, i like to use the proposition that "Every mathematical statement is literally false", and show them the defense of this claim and why intelligent well reasoned philosophers can say such a claim that might at the beginning sound so ridiculous.

ELI5:The difference in a single payer health care system vs Obamacare... what makes one better than the other... why does Obamacare fall short?

A single payer health care system has the government pay for everyone's health care using taxes. It means that the government runs hospitals and clinics and hires staff, and that the government buys the medicines and supplies. Citizens are all covered for health care. Obamacare is not that. Obamacare keeps the current US status quo of health care being run by a bunch of different private companies, with individuals paying money to insurance companies to cover their health care costs. It's just that now those insurance companies have some additional regulations, and people who can't afford private insurance will be covered by state-provided free to low cost insurance. It was a compromise between Single Payer and keeping the status quo, but it leaves no one satisfied.